RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Al­le­ga­tions of bobol on the re­moval of scrap iron ma­te­ri­als from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed were dis­closed by the T&T Scrap Iron Deals As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gus­son dis­closed the al­leged bobol in a video clip­ping which showed con­tain­er trucks and dump trucks mov­ing out scrap iron ma­te­ri­als from what he claimed was one of Her­itage’s lo­ca­tions at night.

The com­pa­ny dis­missed his claims last night in a state­ment.

Fer­gus­son al­so claimed the ex­er­cise was done un­der the watch­ful eyes of po­lice of­fi­cers.

Speak­ing to the Guardian Me­dia af­ter the con­fer­ence, in an at­tempt to get some more in­for­ma­tion, Fer­gus­son claimed he has sev­er­al video record­ings and oth­er record­ings of al­leged con­ver­sa­tions he had with peo­ple on what’s go­ing on.

“I’m not will­ing to dis­close any of the record­ings yet be­cause I have plans on tak­ing up this mat­ter. I have oth­er videos of scrap ma­te­ri­als be­ing moved out too. The one I showed at the con­fer­ence was from the San­ta Flo­ra For­est Re­serves lo­ca­tion and there were po­lice of­fi­cers watch­ing these ve­hi­cles go out with the scrap ma­te­ri­als,” Fer­gus­son claimed.

Dur­ing the con­fer­ence Fer­gus­son did men­tion that he spoke with peo­ple out­side of the coun­try who pledged as­sis­tance in him ac­quir­ing two at­tor­neys from Lon­don to take up the mat­ter legal­ly.

“It’s not go­ing to end. From to­day it’s go­ing to be dif­fer­ent,” Fer­gus­son said.

Fer­gus­son re­it­er­at­ed that there was a ten­der process for the scrap iron ma­te­r­i­al and added that he is cer­tain that his as­so­ci­a­tion bid­ded the high­est bid.

“Show us the bid­ding doc­u­ments that we was on top of the process that we had con­trol over it and be­cause of two per­sons we did not win the bid,” Fer­gus­son said.

Fer­gus­son called yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence to high­light the de­nial of per­mis­sion for them to hold a mo­tor­cade that was planned from Point Fortin to Pointe-a-Pierre.

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Her­itage re­sponds

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed re­spond­ed to the al­le­ga­tions stat­ing that as “a whol­ly State-owned en­ter­prise, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Her­itage) is guid­ed by the prin­ci­ples of the State En­ter­prise Per­for­mance Mon­i­tor­ing Man­u­al (SEP­MM) and Her­itage’s as­so­ci­at­ed process­es, pro­ce­dures and guide­lines. As such, Her­itage’s dis­pos­al and ap­proval process is in com­pli­ance with the SEP­MM, which in­cludes a pub­lic ten­der process that was adopt­ed for the dis­pos­al of ob­so­lete as­sets. The ten­der process for dis­pos­al of the scrap iron fol­lowed this pro­ce­dure.

Her­itage al­so notes that TTSI­DA has shared a video clip, al­leg­ing that scrap met­als were be­ing re­moved from a Her­itage com­pound with­out be­ing weighed. This is to­tal­ly er­ro­neous and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing. More­over, sup­port from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) when un­der­tak­ing tasks such as trans­port­ing sub­stan­tial ma­te­r­i­al and equip­ment from one lo­ca­tion to an­oth­er is a rou­tine safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty pro­ce­dure.

Her­itage re­mains com­mit­ted to a fair and trans­par­ent process­es in its op­er­a­tions and finds it ex­treme­ly re­gret­table that the TTSI­DA would place such un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main.”