Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says even im­proved and amend­ed pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion would not have helped the Gov­ern­ment save over $200 mil­lion on the Curepe In­ter­change project, as even with such leg­is­la­tion there were ways for cor­rupt politi­cians to use more tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

“If what passed for com­pe­ti­tion then was al­lowed to pre­vail, you could sim­ply have said that the job was ten­dered and the low­est bid­der was $440 mil­lion and there­fore you gave the con­tract to that bid­der and not the one for $500 mil­lion and no­body in T&T would have had a prob­lem with that,” Row­ley said dur­ing the of­fi­cial open­ing of the in­ter­change.

“But some­body would have walked away with $200 mil­lion more than what was re­quired. I am sure that the con­trac­tors in­volved in this project made a prof­it.”

Row­ley said the project came in at a fi­nal cost of $221 mil­lion and while he was not an en­gi­neer or a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or, he “knew” the orig­i­nal project price was too high.

“I knew what was hap­pen­ing and I knew that if the con­trac­tors were told that you are not go­ing to get the job at that price ($440m) and we are go­ing back out to ten­der, they will give you a price that is far bet­ter,” Row­ley said.

He said when the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to build the swim­ming pool in Laven­tille, the ini­tial project cost pre­sent­ed by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T was $24 mil­lion.

“I run Ude­CoTT so fast from the Cab­i­net with one ques­tion, if you were go­ing to build a swim­ming pool in your yard, with your mon­ey, will you spend $24 mil­lion on it?” he said.

He said the fin­ished pool even­tu­al­ly cost less than $5 mil­lion.

He said he tried to en­sure that in his time in Gov­ern­ment, it would not be a time for his Cab­i­net “to eat” but for the tax­pay­er to breathe.

“I don’t care what they say on Face­book, this Gov­ern­ment has set the tone for hon­est gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said to a smat­ter­ing of ap­plause.

Row­ley said based on what they were able to ne­go­ti­ate with the Curepe project, the cost of every oth­er in­ter­change “go­ing east” would be bet­ter.

“If we had to pay $440 mil­lion for this, the next five in­ter­changes would have cost us over $2 bil­lion, be­cause we would have set the tone,” he said.

He said Gov­ern­ment al­so saved some $3 bil­lion on the con­tract from Gol­con­da to Point Fortin.

“We knew and we said that that con­tract could be bro­ken up in­to sec­tions, so as to al­low our lo­cal con­trac­tors to be a part of the ten­der­ing process,” he said.

Giv­ing the project to one con­trac­tor had “ben­e­fits” for some peo­ple, he not­ed. He said the ini­tial bud­get for that high­way ex­pan­sion project was $4 bil­lion on the eve of the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion but it went up to $7 bil­lion af­ter the elec­tion.

He re­it­er­at­ed in­for­ma­tion from 2015 that for some rea­son, the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion re­moved the clause in the con­tract which held OAS Con­stu­to­ra, which even­tu­al­ly went bank­rupt, li­able and en­sured that they for­feit­ed their mul­ti-mil­lion bond if they were un­able to com­plete the job. He said re­mov­ing that clause gave the bank­rupt­ed com­pa­ny a $921 mil­lion gift al­though it was un­able to com­plete the con­tract. But back in 2016, the Gov­ern­ment took OAS Con­stu­to­ra to court and re­cov­ered that mon­ey.

Row­ley al­so praised Clax­ton Bay-based con­trac­tor Ju­nior Sam­my, say­ing while he was not sure how much work it did, Ju­nior Sam­my was his friend and would re­main his friend.

“I know him, I know his wife, I know his chil­dren, I know his grand­chil­dren. But Ju­nior knows that if you come to me with a project for $440 mil­lion and I think it is not val­ue for mon­ey, I will tell you we are not hav­ing that and that is not what we told the Cab­i­net,” the PM said.

Row­ley said peo­ple have al­so been “con­di­tioned” to pay­ing those types of prices and be­ing over­charged and “ripped-off,” adding some politi­cians came in­to of­fice with an “old used mo­tor car” and by the time they are out of of­fice “could loan mon­ey to the Trea­sury.”

“I make no apolo­gies for this be­cause I speak for those who have no voice in this coun­try,” Row­ley said.