Gail Alexan­der and

Jesse Ramdeo

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were ab­sent yes­ter­day when a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) start­ed look­ing in­to the Point Fortin high­way con­struc­tion project.

UNC MP Bar­ry Padarath and UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts there­after con­firmed that this was due to the Op­po­si­tion’s de­ci­sion not to par­tic­i­pate in the JSC on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture (L&PI)) in­quiry on the NID­CO re­port on the Point Fortin High­way ex­ten­sion.

“The Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ues to take a strong stand against the PNM us­ing the JSC of the Par­lia­ment to witch­hunt the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment with re­spect to the Point Fortin high­way,” Padarath said.

Padarath and Roberts are the on­ly two Op­po­si­tion mem­bers on the L&PI JSC on the 2023 re­port, en­ti­tled The Saga of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin Project: From 2010 to 2023 – An Ac­count of the De­vel­op­ment and Ex­e­cu­tion of the Largest In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Project Im­ple­ment­ed in T&T.

The JSC was con­vened af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment last No­vem­ber, said there was an ur­gent need for a de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of the project, which he la­belled as a scan­dal.

For yes­ter­day’s first sit­ting, apart from JSC chair­man De­oroop Teemal, on­ly Gov­ern­ment mem­bers - Symon de No­bri­ga, Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal and Muhammed Yunus Ibrahim -were present. PNM Point Fortin MP Kennedy Richards was ab­sent in the morn­ing.

Padarath said he and Roberts wouldn’t par­tic­i­pate in the JSC as it was a “witch-hunt and cha­rade.”

He added: “The UNC mem­bers of the JSC have re­fused to at­tend the com­mit­tee meet­ings on that mat­ter in protest against it. The Op­po­si­tion will not play any part in a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to scan­dalise and at­tack mem­bers of the Part­ner­ship (Gov­ern­ment).”

Padarath and Roberts ob­ject­ed to par­tic­i­pa­tion be­cause the mat­ter is al­ready be­fore the court and there is the in­de­pen­dent Ven­tour Com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the high­way project. They felt a JSC en­quiry in­to the project would run afoul of the Par­lia­ment’s sub ju­dice rules.

Teemal said the ob­jec­tives of the pub­lic hear­ing in­clude ex­am­in­ing the ef­fi­ca­cy of the pro­cure­ment poli­cies used to im­ple­ment the project and the rea­sons for amend­ments or ad­den­da to the orig­i­nal con­tract with OAS.

The JSC yes­ter­day heard from NID­CO chair­man Her­bert George, who said it was fit­ting to la­bel the project a saga, as “it start­ed out with much ex­pec­ta­tion, be­fore long it ran in­to dif­fi­cul­ties, lots of protest ac­tion, that de­layed ex­e­cu­tion then there was this in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny en­gaged in the ex­e­cu­tion of the project that ap­peared to be care­ful­ly cho­sen and one that ran in­to dif­fi­cul­ties, what we will call bank­rupt­cy so that com­pa­ny had to be re­moved”.

George said the re­port de­tailed how the now-bank­rupt Brazil­ian firm OAS Con­stru­to­ra was award­ed the con­tract, 29 re­quests for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) were is­sued and pro­pos­als from three re­spon­dents with bid prices rang­ing from $5.2854 bil­lion to $6.3662 bil­lion.

Ten­ders were re­ceived from Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed, Con­stru­to­ra OAS (OAS) and GLF Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed.

The re­port stat­ed: “In the ear­ly stages of the project, project man­agers AE­COM de­scribed OAS’ per­for­mance as slow and not up to con­trac­tu­al stan­dard. OAS failed to pro­vide ac­cept­able sched­ules that treat­ed with ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the re­lease of sites, al­though they were aware from the on­set that the em­ploy­er did not own all the lands with­in the right-of-way and was in the process of ac­quir­ing the lands not owned, by com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion, un­der the shad­ow of pri­vate treaty.”

Fol­low­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2011, a let­ter of in­tent (LOI) dat­ed March 4, 2011, pro­vid­ed for pay­ment of up to US$50 mil­lion to OAS to cov­er post-ten­der ex­pens­es along with the cost of ser­vices, work, goods, and ma­te­ri­als. It al­so stip­u­lat­ed a max­i­mum li­a­bil­i­ty to OAS of US$50 mil­lion for all work done un­der the LOI, and any claims aris­ing from a fail­ure to fi­nal­ize the con­tract with­in 90 or an­oth­er mu­tu­al­ly agreed pe­ri­od.

George said the arrange­ment was con­fus­ing.