DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that the Gov­ern­ment is pay­ing more than ex­pect­ed for the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, but he said it is nowhere near the half a bil­lion dol­lars Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is al­leg­ing. Rather, it is on­ly US$2.5 mil­lion (TT$16.9 mil­lion).

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Im­bert said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments on the project hinged on three main points; a cost over­run of TT$462 mil­lion, mul­ti­ple in­stances of fail­ure to meet spec­i­fi­ca­tions and build­ing codes on the su­per­struc­ture, and ex­ten­sive de­lays.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia for the first time since the al­le­ga­tions were made on Mon­day, Im­bert ac­knowl­edged that the orig­i­nal con­struc­tion con­tract was US$128.7 mil­lion (TT$872 mil­lion), in­clu­sive of pro­vi­sion­al sums and con­tin­gen­cies. He al­so ad­mit­ted the project is slight­ly be­hind sched­ule, as the com­ple­tion date was Jan­u­ary 2025 af­ter COVID-19 de­layed works which be­gan in 2020.

How­ev­er, Im­bert said con­trary to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims that the project has ac­crued TT$431 mil­lion in cost over­runs, the orig­i­nal fig­ure in­creased by on­ly two per cent. He ex­plained, though, that the orig­i­nal con­tract catered for US$11.5m (TT$77.9 mil­lion) in case of vari­a­tions, adding that this has since risen to US$14 mil­lion (TT$94.8 mil­lion).

“As of to­day, the orig­i­nal con­struc­tion con­tract sum (US$128.7 mil­lion) has been ex­ceed­ed by US$2.5 mil­lion or two per cent,” he said, at­tribut­ing this to vari­a­tions stem­ming from en­hance­ments to the ICT and ELV com­po­nents of the project, glob­al in­creas­es in the cost of air­port equip­ment and con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and de­lay claims caused by pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed re­stric­tions.

He al­so de­nied the main con­trac­tor, Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, had been cut­ting cor­ners.

On Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tion that over­sight con­sul­tant, CEP lim­it­ed, was fired for re­fus­ing to “rub­ber stamp” doc­u­ments to move the project for­ward, Im­bert said their con­tract was sim­ply not re­newed.

“It was felt there was need to bring on new con­sul­tants,” he said.

“You have to un­der­stand that no con­sul­tant in Trinidad and To­ba­go has done a project of this com­plex­i­ty be­fore, it’s the first time. This is not a dol­ly house. This is why we in Fi­nance felt it was im­por­tant and nec­es­sary to bring on one of the top avi­a­tion con­sult­ing firms in the world (Mott Mc­Don­ald) and one of the top con­struc­tion man­age­ment firms in the world (Gleeds) to ad­vise us,” he added.

While he would not val­i­date the Jan­u­ary Mc­Don­ald re­port or No­vem­ber 22 Gleeds re­ports be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed in the pub­lic do­main to raise is­sues sur­round­ing the qual­i­ty of the work and at­tempts to fast-track to a soft open­ing ear­ly next year, Im­bert said he has re­ceived 11 re­ports since De­cem­ber 2023. He said the lat­est in­for­ma­tion he has is that the tar­get date for com­ple­tion of con­struc­tion is March 31, 2025, with han­dover planned for the same month.

“They told me to­day that the project is on tar­get to be com­plet­ed in March of 2025 and the project is be­ing built in ac­cor­dance with the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al air­port con­struc­tion stan­dards,” he ex­plained.

Im­bert said there has been “re­mark­able” progress on the site, which is 91 per cent com­plete. He added that con­struc­tion, test­ing and han­dover is on sched­ule, at which point the Air­port’s Au­thor­i­ty can com­mence op­er­a­tional fit-out, train­ing and readi­ness to sup­port the go-live date of Ju­ly 2025.

Hav­ing been re­tained by the Min­istry of Fi­nance for con­sult­ing, he said Mott Mc­Don­ald has so far been paid US$200,000 (TT$1.4 mil­lion) via a grant from the CAF - De­vel­op­ment Bank while Gleeds has been paid US$421,000 (TT$2.8 mil­lion) un­der a sim­i­lar arrange­ment.

Asked to present their re­ports to the pub­lic, Im­bert said he would seek ad­vice.

Mean­while, Im­bert al­so dis­missed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tion that Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) fi­nanciers had been hired as sub-con­trac­tors for the project. He re­fused to for­mal­ly re­spond un­less Per­sad-Bisses­sar names the con­trac­tors. He al­so con­demned her calls for a crim­i­nal probe to be con­duct­ed.

“What is the crim­i­nal of­fence that has been com­mit­ted that re­quires a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion?” he asked.

“Isn’t lo­cal con­tent re­quired? Isn’t it a re­quire­ment that if a for­eign con­trac­tor is work­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that they need to max­imise lo­cal con­tent? So, if a Chi­nese con­trac­tor gets a project in the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the twin-is­land state, and the project is in To­ba­go, don’t you ex­pect them to hire To­bag­o­ni­ans and sup­pli­ers of goods and ser­vices in To­ba­go? And con­trac­tors res­i­dent in To­ba­go? Is the leader of the Op­po­si­tion say­ing every sin­gle sup­pli­er of goods and ser­vices in To­ba­go is a PNM fi­nancier? That’s non­sense!”

He re­it­er­at­ed that the project is be­ing care­ful­ly con­struct­ed.

“In fact, one of the rea­sons for the de­lay in the project was that all the con­sul­tants were be­ing care­ful, es­pe­cial­ly with the events that we are see­ing around the world with cli­mate change in terms of the in­ten­si­ty of hur­ri­canes and so on, be­ing very, very care­ful to make sure that the de­sign was done in ac­cor­dance with the prop­er in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.”

At a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) cot­tage meet­ing on Mon­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the air­port project had bal­looned in price, amass­ing TT$431 mil­lion in cost over­runs ow­ing to 1,127 days of de­layed works.

How­ev­er, in re­sponse to this on Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­demned her com­ments as “a scan­dalous out­burst and tor­rent of base­less al­le­ga­tions,” adding it was a ma­li­cious at­tempt to tar­nish the project and score po­lit­i­cal points.