(Trinidad Express) Contractors are “padding” their payment claims to the tune of millions, Jearlean John, chairman of the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UdeCOTT), claimed yesterday.
She said contractors who were owed as little as TT$2 million were escalating their costs and submitting claims for up to TT$30 million and TT$50 million.
Contractors claim to be owed millions for construction works carried out under the former People’s National Movement (PNM) government and former UDeCOTT executive chairman Calder Hart.
John made the statements yesterday at the Housing Development Corporation’s (HDC) headquarters, Port of Spain, where line Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal hosted a meeting with members of the Joint Consultative Council for the Construction Industry (JCC).
Moonilal invited the members of the JCC to air their concerns face to face as opposed to engaging in discussion through the media.
Asked to respond to John’s statements, JCC president Afra Raymond said: “We have to be very careful we are not cultivating mischief. A contractor can make a claim for whatever work he does, and that claim has to be verified by an engineer or a quantity surveyor, and that engineer or quantity surveyor is employed by the client, whether it be Royal Bank or HDC. There are 35 claims inside that are not being paid; we need to be very careful not to give rise to these misunderstandings”.
Just last week, head of the Contractors Association of Trinidad and Tobago Mervyn Chin said that some TT$600 million was still owed to contractors. He said he did not understand queries about claims being submitted as all claims were certified.
At yesterday’s meeting, the opening comments were somewhat heated as Raymond expressed his concerns over outstanding payments owed to contractors, a lack of strategic direction for UDeCOTT/HDC, the absence of procurement legislation, the status of the implementation of the Uff Commission’s recommendations and the absence of local expertise in settling outstanding payments.
John addressed every concern Raymond raised.
“In the settlement of claims, contractors will bring all kinds of things inside of here, including…maybe the facelift for the wife…we have a lot of padding inside of these things and particularly at UDeCOTT,” said John.
“We cannot go out and just pay what contractors are demanding of us; many claims would have started at TT$2 million, verified certificate for payment, but today, they would be at TT$30 million, TT$50 million, all on the basis of extension of time, escalation of cost. Trinidad is the only place with price trending upwards; the rest of the world is trending downward because we have these large sums being claimed for escalation in cost,” she added.
Last week, Moonilal disclosed that between UDeCOTT and HDC, TT$1 billion was paid to settle some outstanding debts to contractors.
John explained that when she began working at UDeCOTT, there was no funding, and she had to correct this with the banks who were unwilling to release funding, even with a Government guarantee.
John said the firm Hill International has been working with local firm ESQ Ltd to go through the claims. Raymond had argued that no local firm was involved in the process.
UDeCOTT’s accounts, she added, were in a mess, forcing her to hire an auditing firm to go through the documents.
She said she was asked to verify accounts for 2007, which she refused to do as she was not even there at the time. “They wanted me to verify it, who wasn’t there; I can’t do that, you know how I unlucky with the Integrity Commission,” she joked, prompting laughter.
With respect to the implementation of the 91 recommendations of the Uff Commission, John explained that 45 fell out of the remit of UDeCOTT while 46 were implemented and some well on their way to being implemented.
She added that although these recommendations were not directed at the HDC, they were implemented.
Noting that taxpayers spent some TT$11 million on the Uff Commission, John said: “When you look at it from a managerial standpoint, these are very basic systems that should have been in a company anyway; it’s really unfortunate we had to spend all of that money.”
