JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

THA spends 72.1M on oil spill clean-up

by

25 days ago
20250125
 Secretary of Finance for the THA Petal-Ann Roberts

Secretary of Finance for the THA Petal-Ann Roberts

COURTESY THA

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has spent $72.1 mil­lion for the Feb­ru­ary 2024 oil spill, ex­ceed­ing the $50 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, with $4.9 mil­lion in out­stand­ing debts to clear.

This was re­vealed at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day by Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my Sec­re­tary Petal Ann Roberts.

Roberts ex­plained the fi­nan­cial strain at the time, with the THA’s fund ac­count in a $34 mil­lion over­draft and just $2 mil­lion in its con­tin­gency ac­count.

Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment sup­port was de­layed, so to man­age the cri­sis, $15 mil­lion from un­spent bal­ances was re­al­lo­cat­ed in March 2024.

She said this mon­ey came out from the un­spent bal­ances ac­count “and this ac­count caters for pro­grams like CEPEP pay­ments.”

She said the THA was left to “repri­ori­tise our re­sources at the time and shift $15 mil­lion from the un­spent bal­ances ac­count to the con­tin­gency ac­count to treat with the emer­gency pay­ments un­der the oil spill.

“Our con­tin­gency ac­count right now on­ly has about $900,000 in the event of any emer­gency that takes place in To­ba­go.”

Ma­jor pay­ments in­clud­ed $15.4 mil­lion to Tiger Tanks Lim­it­ed, $18.7 mil­lion to Kaizen En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices, and $4.3 mil­lion to Am­bi­par Re­sponse for cleanup ef­forts. Over $29 mil­lion was used for rentals, ac­com­mo­da­tions, cater­ing, and ma­te­ri­als.

The re­main­ing debts in­clude $3.3 mil­lion owed to fish­er­folk, al­most $500,000 to Liquor Con­struc­tion, and ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400,000 to MI4 Se­cu­ri­ty.

Roberts said, “We usu­al­ly re­ceive our re­leas­es very late and not in ac­cor­dance with the law, and there­fore it is very dif­fi­cult at this time to say when these pay­ments can be made, but this re­spon­si­ble ad­min­is­tra­tion has been mak­ing pay­ments.

“We have put our­selves in an over­draft po­si­tion. We have used up all our con­tin­gency re­sources, and we have been repri­ori­tis­ing our ac­tiv­i­ties to en­sure that all these li­a­bil­i­ties are tak­en care of.”

She said by the time the Gov­ern­ment sent the $50 mil­lion, the THA had al­ready spent $54.4 mil­lion on oil spill-re­lat­ed ex­pens­es.

Au­gus­tine said he now hoped this break­down would not on­ly bring clar­i­ty but al­so si­lence his op­po­nents.

Au­gus­tine said, “You can see where we are at, what has hap­pened, what has tran­spired and you can see in a trans­par­ent way that the THA is not try­ing to un­der­cut any­body but has been very re­spon­si­ble in how it man­ages the oil spill clean-up ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Au­gus­tine crit­i­cised the mi­nor­i­ty for ac­cus­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, say­ing that de­spite the fi­nan­cial strain, his team did well.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored