AN­NA-LISA-PAUL and

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ow­ing more than $40 mil­lion to sev­er­al garages and au­to re­pair shops across the coun­try for work done on po­lice ve­hi­cles. The out­stand­ing debt has forced more than 20 garages and re­pair shops to close their doors over the last six weeks while oth­ers have been send­ing home work­ers

The ac­tion tak­en by these garages has left hun­dreds of po­lice ve­hi­cles in­op­er­a­ble as they lie idle at po­lice sta­tions and re­pair yards na­tion­wide.

Busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael, who owns one of the garages af­fect­ed by the non-pay­ment of mon­ey for re­pairs to TTP’s ve­hi­cles, said apart from the $40 mil­lion “the TTPS is al­ready ow­ing over $100 mil­lion for goods and ser­vices” pro­vid­ed. He said this fig­ure in­clud­ed parts for the new­er mod­el of ve­hi­cles owned by the po­lice ser­vice.

The Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (VM­COTT), es­tab­lished in 2000 to re­pair and ser­vice state-owned pri­vate and com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles, is still owed $14 mil­lion for re­pairs done to po­lice ve­hi­cles over the last eight years.

TTPS al­to­geth­er owes $154 mil­lion for ve­hi­cle re­pairs, parts, and ser­vices.

Mean­while, the crim­i­nal el­e­ments are al­ready cap­i­tal­is­ing on this short­fall of po­lice re­sources while busi­ness own­ers and home­own­ers are left in the lurch wait­ing for po­lice to ar­rive hours af­ter a crime and when they do, it is some­times on foot.

The CEO of VM­COTT Natasha Prince re­called that in May 2019 they had been owed $18 mil­lion. How­ev­er, a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the TTPS ac­count showed a pay­ment of $4 mil­lion had been made in 2012. Since then, no fur­ther pay­ments have been made to VM­COTT. Prince said al­though they have not been giv­en any busi­ness by the TTPS over the last year, they are still be­ing owed $14 mil­lion.

When Prince made those claims in May 2019, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith shot back in­sist­ing that VM­COTT would not be paid un­til the in­voic­es are pro­vid­ed for the work done. Prince said last week that VM­COTT sup­plied the TTPS with in­voic­es in Feb­ru­ary of this year, but was not giv­en any as­sur­ance of when they would be paid.

Al­though there are claims in the pub­lic that at least 50 to 60 per cent of the po­lice ve­hi­cle are down, there is no de­fin­i­tive fig­ure to re­flect how many ve­hi­cles are not func­tion­ing at this time. How­ev­er, last year Grif­fith re­vealed that a stag­ger­ing 500 ve­hi­cles had been tak­en out of ser­vice be­tween 2016-2018. He stat­ed that at least one-fifth of the po­lice ve­hi­cles were down for re­pairs. Grif­fith at­trib­uted this to an in­ef­fi­cient main­te­nance sys­tem and ad­mit­ted the ab­sence of those ve­hi­cles had ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed the TTPS’s crime-fight­ing abil­i­ties.

Grif­fith de­scribed the pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance sys­tem as flawed and said up un­til the mid­dle of 2018, a po­lice ve­hi­cle was be­ing writ­ten off and tak­en out of ser­vice at least every three to four days. He said in many cas­es back then, those re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the fleet would wait un­til the ve­hi­cle was crit­i­cal­ly dam­aged or worn out be­fore send­ing it for re­pairs. In the face of these short­com­ings, an au­dit of the TTPS’s fleet was or­dered last year to as­sess the sta­tus of each ve­hi­cle.

‘Sup­pli­ers spent mil­lions to stock items’

Ish­mael, who con­firmed to the Sun­day Guardian that his busi­ness was one of those af­fect­ed by the TTPS’s in­abil­i­ty to pay for the re­pair of their ve­hi­cles, said the af­fect­ed busi­ness­es in­clud­ed those spe­cial­is­ing in bat­tery sup­plies, air-con­di­tion­ing re­pairs, tyre re­place­ment, align­ment ser­vices, me­chan­i­cal main­te­nance, body re­pair and paint­ing.

“My com­pa­ny ser­viced be­tween 50 to 60 ve­hi­cles per week, but about one month ago a de­ci­sion was tak­en by garages to hold off on pro­vid­ing ser­vices to the TTPS alone,” said Ish­mael.

He said some sup­pli­ers had al­ready spent mil­lions to stock items while he in­stalled two new lifts in an­tic­i­pa­tion of con­tin­ued busi­ness from the TTPS.

Ish­mael de­nied that sup­pli­ers had been seek­ing prof­it off the TTPS. “What we charge the TTPS is what we charge oth­er peo­ple. Five to ten per cent of the work we do for the po­lice is free be­cause this is how we give back.

Al­though the TTPS has out­stand­ing debts stretch­ing more than three years, Ish­mael said they “con­tin­ued do­ing the work and the TTPS un­der­stood this at the end of the day.” Ish­mael claimed that with the TTPS sev­er­ing ties with VM­COTT al­most a year ago, they did not have any­where else to get their ve­hi­cles re­paired. But the sit­u­a­tion has now be­come un­ten­able for the pri­vate garages.

Min­istry of Fi­nance not pay­ing

Ish­mael said the Min­istry of Fi­nance was ow­ing sup­pli­ers the out­stand­ing monies.

In re­sponse to an email from Ish­mael on No­vem­ber 4, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert gave the as­sur­ance that a re­quest for funds had been made and it was be­ing processed.

In a fol­low-up email to Im­bert on No­vem­ber 16, that al­so in­clud­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Grif­fith, Ish­mael again out­lined the con­cerns raised by garage own­ers and said more than 200 em­ploy­ees had been laid off from these af­fect­ed busi­ness­es. He said some own­ers and op­er­a­tors were un­able to pay salaries to their staff as there was lit­tle or no rev­enue be­ing gen­er­at­ed.

How­ev­er, a month has gone, and Ish­mael said they have not re­ceived any mon­ey. To en­sure that garages do not con­tin­ue to haem­or­rhage from these loss­es, Ish­mael said: “The garages would have no choice but to lit­i­gate at the end of the day to get what is owed to us.”

He said garage own­ers are con­tem­plat­ing a silent protest in front of the Min­istry of Fi­nance if some form of pay­ment is not made soon. Ish­mael said af­fect­ed garage own­ers could re­sume work if a “50-60 per cent good-faith pay­ment is made.”

The TTPS re­ceived $2.28 bil­lion in the 2020/2021 bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

Run­away crime

Ish­mael said po­lice-op­er­at­ed ve­hi­cles need­ed to be ser­viced reg­u­lar­ly be­cause of its con­tin­u­ous use.

Ish­mael said: “With 50-60 per cent of the fleet down due to failed en­gines, they are now putting the bal­ance of ve­hi­cles and those us­ing them at risk, as it is over the stip­u­lat­ed ser­vice and re­pair pe­ri­od.”

In a shock­ing de­vel­op­ment, Ish­mael said so­cial me­dia users re­port­ed last month that po­lice of­fi­cers were host­ing a fund-rais­ing BBQ to gen­er­ate funds “to change oil and buy tyres for a po­lice car.” He al­so de­scribed an in­ci­dent in which po­lice of­fi­cers came to a vic­tim’s house in San­ta Cruz on foot fol­low­ing a rob­bery, since they did not have any ve­hi­cles at the po­lice sta­tion.

He said the biggest con­cern now was run­away crime.

“The blood of our women and chil­dren are ac­tu­al­ly fer­til­is­ing the soil of this coun­try . . . and you telling me the most im­por­tant thing is to look af­ter our po­lice ser­vice but in­stead, you are study­ing the San Fer­nan­do Wharf, the To­ba­go Air­port and to re­build the whole of Port-of-Spain and the TTPS don’t have mon­ey to keep run­ning and our women and chil­dren are be­ing killed?”

He warned that the “TTPS could fall flat” as they do not have the prop­er tools. He said if they fail to main­tain the ve­hi­cles prompt­ly, it could lead to hefty re­pair bills lat­er.

VM­COTT: TTPS debt still stands

Al­most eight years af­ter re­ceiv­ing a mere $4 mil­lion pay­out from an $18 mil­lion debt, VM­COTT’s CEO said she was un­sure when the re­main­der will be set­tled. But Prince re­mains op­ti­mistic.

“I know when they get their funds they will take care of VM­COTT,” she said

Prince said in 2018 VM­COTT re­fur­bished 55 Nis­san X-Trail ve­hi­cles for the TTPS and in 2019 they pro­vid­ed pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance and re­paired ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 Nis­san X-Trails. How­ev­er, they have not re­paired or ser­viced any ve­hi­cles for the TTPS this year. Prince said she had writ­ten to the Gov­ern­ment about the lack of busi­ness as they have been the bonafide com­pa­ny to ser­vice the X-Trails in the past.

She be­lieves the $14 mil­lion debt is what prompt­ed the TTPS to take their busi­ness else­where.

The loss of busi­ness from the TTPS has se­vere­ly im­pact­ed VM­COTT’s op­er­a­tions ac­cord­ing to Prince.

“It was a big blow, it was a big blow. How­ev­er, we have been find­ing oth­er in­no­v­a­tive ways to sur­vive. When we were do­ing the re­fur­bish­ment we re­ceived an ad­vance pay­ment of $400,000 and we nev­er re­ceived any­thing af­ter that. The ex­tent of the re­pairs and the re­fur­bish­ment went to over $800,000,” she said.

Prince said while they have been ac­cused of mak­ing er­rors on in­voic­es in the past, the com­pa­ny has since re­brand­ed and im­proved the ser­vice it pro­vides.

She said while VM­COTT’s rev­enue streams have been dwin­dling dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, they man­aged to forge part­ner­ships with pri­vate and com­mer­cial en­ti­ties to re­main afloat.

X-Trails re­paired, wait­ing to be col­lect­ed

Prince said VM­COTT has about eight X-Trails for the TTPS that have been re­paired and are wait­ing to be col­lect­ed.

“I have about eight X-Trails parked up here. They have been here since 2019 and they have al­ready been re­fur­bished.”

Asked why the TTPS had not col­lect­ed the re­paired ve­hi­cles, she re­spond­ed, “I need mon­ey, my dear. You can’t col­lect the ve­hi­cles with­out pay­ing me. Re­mem­ber, I put out a lot of mon­ey. I am still ow­ing sup­pli­ers for parts that I took and I am still pay­ing sup­pli­ers as a re­sult of that.”

Asked if VM­COTT would con­tin­ue hold­ing the ve­hi­cles un­til they re­ceived pay­ment, Prince said, “I can­not say, I am hold­ing the ve­hi­cles. But we were hop­ing while the TTPS left them here...it’s un­til they get their house in or­der and they or­gan­ise the pay­ment for us, then they could have tak­en them. But we still have some oth­er stuff to be done on it too. So tak­ing it just like that doesn’t make sense.”

The ve­hi­cles in VM­COTT’s pos­ses­sion still need to be out­fit­ted with sen­sors, tyres, mir­rors, and bat­ter­ies, while the TTPS lo­go has to be paint­ed on them.

It is es­ti­mat­ed this could cost be­tween $200,000 and $300,000.

Prince said VM­COTT has been op­er­at­ing in good faith by al­low­ing the TTPS to use part of their Beetham Gar­dens com­pound to re­pair and ser­vice non-func­tion­al mo­tor­cy­cles.

The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment do­nat­ed 200 mo­tor­cy­cles to the TTPS in 2019.

Re­ceiv­ing pic­tures from so­cial me­dia users who have ques­tioned why the TTPS had dozens of ve­hi­cles rust­ing away on a hill­top near VM­COTT’s San Fer­nan­do of­fice for over four years, Prince said some of these ve­hi­cles can be ser­viced.

She said many felt the aban­doned ve­hi­cles could be re­paired and used in the fight against crime.

“Peo­ple have been tag­ging me on Face­book say­ing an­oth­er mil­lion-dol­lar tax­pay­ers’ fund­ed ve­hi­cles are rot­ting away. It could fix... but that would save mon­ey.”

Of this fleet, she es­ti­mat­ed 30 per cent could be re­paired.

How­ev­er, she stressed, “This has noth­ing to do with me. We are not the own­ers of the fleet. They are not in our in­ven­to­ry to say we need to ser­vice them. I can­not ac­count for that. I think the TTPS is tak­ing them slow­ly and sure­ly and ear­mark­ing them for mi­nor re­pairs.”

BOX

Au­di­tor-Gen­er­al: No pol­i­cy di­rec­tion for fleet man­age­ment

A 2010 spe­cial re­port pre­pared by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s Man­age­ment and Main­te­nance of Ve­hi­cles in the TTPS stat­ed: “Over the years there have been nu­mer­ous com­plaints against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­gard­ing their ser­vice de­liv­ery. The lack of func­tion­ing ve­hi­cles has been cit­ed as a con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tor to this sit­u­a­tion. The po­lice ser­vice is in the midst of a trans­for­ma­tion process to ad­dress the is­sue of its ef­fec­tive­ness and to im­prove cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.”

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2006 to 2008, the re­port stat­ed $86 mil­lion was spent on the ac­qui­si­tion of ve­hi­cles.

The re­port fur­ther stat­ed that de­spite gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment, the po­lice ser­vice con­tin­ues to be ham­pered by a lack of mo­bil­i­ty which man­i­fests it­self in pub­lic com­plaints about their”in­abil­i­ty to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner.”

“A key prob­lem with the man­age­ment and main­te­nance of po­lice ve­hi­cles has been the ab­sence of strate­gic plan­ning and pol­i­cy di­rec­tion at all lev­els in the fleet man­age­ment process. This im­por­tant area has been giv­en low pri­or­i­ty by the po­lice ser­vice re­sult­ing in the fail­ure to achieve val­ue for mon­ey,” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port added that the “po­lice ser­vice did not have a com­pre­hen­sive pol­i­cy in place which gov­erned all as­pects of their fleet man­age­ment func­tions.”

It al­so out­lined that the “po­lice ser­vice ve­hi­cle ac­qui­si­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ed by the lack of de­tailed pol­i­cy guide­lines. Dur­ing the years 2000 to 2008, there were many changes in per­sons as­signed to man­age the ve­hi­cle fleet. This cou­pled with the lack of pol­i­cy has re­sult­ed in a wide va­ri­ety of ve­hi­cles be­ing pur­chased for use.”

The re­port ad­vised that not all ve­hi­cle types had been ap­pro­pri­ate and suit­able to the needs of the po­lice giv­en their unique re­quire­ments.

“As a re­sult, at the time of our re­view, there were at least 24 dif­fer­ent types of ve­hi­cles in the po­lice ser­vice’s fleet.”

In 2006, the re­port re­vealed, a to­tal of 178 ve­hi­cles were bought for $25 mil­lion, 99 ve­hi­cles were pur­chased in 2007 for $16 mil­lion, while 220 ve­hi­cles were ob­tained in 2008 for $45 mil­lion.

“We found that ve­hi­cle main­te­nance costs av­er­aged $26.5 mil­lion per year over the pe­ri­od 2006 to 2008. De­spite this in­vest­ment, ap­prox­i­mate­ly half of the ve­hi­cle fleet was found to be non-op­er­a­tional dur­ing this pe­ri­od,” the re­port stat­ed.

Ques­tions sent to the TTPS:

1. What is the ex­act num­ber of ve­hi­cles owned by the TTPS? Can you pro­vide a break­down of the types of ve­hi­cles and how they have been as­signed to the var­i­ous polic­ing di­vi­sions?

2. Can you say which polic­ing di­vi­sion has been the most af­fect­ed by the lack of ve­hi­cles?

3. Can you pro­vide an ex­act fig­ure as to how many are cur­rent­ly op­er­a­tional? For those out of ser­vice, can you say how long they have been out and why?

4. In 2019, an au­dit of the TTPS’s fleet was or­dered so that the sta­tus of each ve­hi­cle could be as­sessed. Can you pro­vide an up­date on this and al­so in­di­cate what else was found dur­ing the au­dit?

The ques­tions were sub­mit­ted to the TTPS’ Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment on De­cem­ber 10. Of­fi­cials ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the email and said it would have to be sent to the re­spec­tive de­part­ment to be an­swered. There was no time frame giv­en for when the an­swers will be pro­vid­ed.