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Monday, March 3, 2025

Jack accuses PM of ‘errors’ in Point Fortin highway fiasco

... Ready to clear his name

by

486 days ago
20231103
Jack Warner, former minister of Works and Transport under the People’s Partnership government.

Jack Warner, former minister of Works and Transport under the People’s Partnership government.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship works min­is­ter Jack Warn­er is pre­pared to ap­pear be­fore a Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee ex­am­in­ing the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way con­struc­tion—and he’s ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of al­leged­ly mak­ing “er­rors” when Row­ley spoke about the high­way project on Wednes­day.

“To come to the ho­n­ourable House (Par­lia­ment) and mis­rep­re­sent the facts should in­voke (Par­lia­ment’s) Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee to treat with this de­lib­er­ate strange­ness to truth that was re­port­ed by our Prime Min­is­ter,” Warn­er added yes­ter­day in a state­ment seek­ing to clear the air on is­sues con­cern­ing the project.

His re­sponse fol­lowed Row­ley’s state­ment in Par­lia­ment, when he said a pa­per on the high­way project is be­ing re­ferred to the Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and In­fra­struc­ture for “ur­gent de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion”.

The pa­per, which was laid in Par­lia­ment, is en­ti­tled “The Saga of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin Project”.

Row­ley raised con­cerns about is­sues re­gard­ing the con­struc­tion of the high­way un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship/Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment, their in­ter­ac­tion with Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA—and OAS ex­ec­u­tives’ trip to South Africa for a “se­cret meet­ing” with a Cab­i­net mem­ber “re­spon­si­ble for and in­volved in the de­ci­sion on the project”.

Yes­ter­day, Warn­er said he would “most def­i­nite­ly” ap­pear be­fore the JSC if re­quest­ed. He added that he wished to put on record—via his state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day—an ac­cu­rate ac­count of the process which led to the award of the de­sign-build con­tract to OAS as it re­lates to him.

“I pro­pose to cor­rect the er­rors laid out by the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter on Wednes­day,” he said.

Warn­er said short­ly af­ter his ap­point­ment as Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, he met with the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and got down to the first or­der of busi­ness—a re­quest of all the ma­jor out­stand­ing or in­com­plete projects left be­hind by the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Warn­er said the con­struc­tion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way was the biggest project.

“There were three bid­ders. Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed at $6.8 bil­lion, Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA at $5.2 bil­lion and GLF Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion, the ex­act bid I can­not re­call,” he added.

“Based on the doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed to me, the past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had done ex­ten­sive work with re­gard to the se­lec­tion of a con­trac­tor and it was clear that it had agreed to go with Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA with its $5.2 bil­lion bid, even though it was $1.6 bil­lion above the en­gi­neer’s price of $3.6 bil­lion.”

Warn­er quot­ed an April 9, 2016, T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Row­ley de­nies award of con­tract to Brazil­ian firm,” writ­ten by Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly.

“… In the last re­port of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) for Oc­to­ber 2015 and its for­mer pres­i­dent Dr Car­son Charles, on May 13, 2010, the Ten­ders Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed that Nid­co en­ter in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with OAS Con­stru­to­ra Ltd as a pre­ferred re­spon­dent,” he read.

Warn­er said the ar­ti­cle went on to re­port, “… At the end of the ten­der eval­u­a­tion process, the rec­om­men­da­tion was sent to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. On May 25, 2010, one day af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion, un­der then Nid­co pres­i­dent Keisha Ince, Nid­co in­formed OAS by let­ter that it was the pre­ferred re­spon­dent.”

Warn­er added, “So the ground­work for se­lect­ing Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA was com­plet­ed un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and the then pres­i­dent of Nid­co, Keisha Ince, one day af­ter the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was vot­ed in­to pow­er, in­formed OAS that it was the pre­ferred re­spon­dent. These facts have nev­er been con­tra­dict­ed.”

“A Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the date which I can­not re­call af­ter some 13 years, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (for­mer), Win­ston Dook­er­an, sum­moned the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Cheryl Black­man and me to his of­fice. He want­ed to be sure re­gard­ing the in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the Point Fortin High­way and that the PNM did its due dili­gence be­fore rec­om­mend­ing the con­trac­tor. Af­ter that, the mat­ter left our hands and Nid­co took over the process,” Warn­er stat­ed.

Clear­ing the air on what he said was the Prime Min­is­ter’s “ob­ses­sion to my vis­it to South Africa” and its con­nec­tion to the high­way con­tract, Warn­er said this was around the time of the men’s 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa.

“As FI­FA’s vice pres­i­dent, I was re­quired to be there but I didn’t plan to stay for the en­tire event. Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA vis­it­ed me at my ho­tel, with­out any pri­or knowl­edge that they were com­ing. They re­quest­ed from me a sta­tus re­port on the high­way, since com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not forth­com­ing,” he added.

“I in­formed the rep­re­sen­ta­tives that it would be re­miss of me to dis­cuss Gov­ern­ment’s busi­ness with­out ap­proval from the Cab­i­net. I asked them to reach out to Nid­co for an up­date. They even of­fered to fly me back to T&T, which I re­fused be­cause the op­tics of that jour­ney would have made me con­flict­ed. So I trav­elled back first class from Jo­han­nes­burg in South Africa on British Air­ways and al­lowed the OAS of­fi­cials to com­mu­ni­cate with Nid­co of­fi­cials on this mat­ter,” Warn­er said.


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