Trinidad PM: Corrupt engineers inflating State contracts

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said over-in­flat­ed en­gi­neer es­ti­mates at gov­ern­ment min­istries have cost this coun­try mil­lions of dol­lars over the years.

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Val­sayn yester­day for the Curepe In­ter­change Project, the Prime Min­is­ter slammed the ini­tial in­flat­ed cost at­tached to the project un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

In 2013, the project was es­ti­mat­ed to cost $513 m.

Af­ter that es­ti­mate, a bid of $522 m was ac­cept­ed for the con­struc­tion of the project in 2013. How­ev­er, due to the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the project, it was not start­ed.

“But how could we have ap­proved $530 m and to­day the same thing is be­ing built for $221 m? The ques­tion is where is that ex­tra $230 m go­ing? And who was get­ting that?” asked Row­ley.

“I can­not for the life of me un­der­stand what kind of tech­ni­cal in­put would have gone in­to the ap­proval of a project like this, to get an ap­proval for $500-odd mil­lion as the cost of the project. And that would have been the en­gi­neer’s es­ti­mate that was ap­proved.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said these en­gi­neer es­ti­mates have been a part of a cor­rupt process which has cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars.

“Rather than get the ben­e­fit of com­pe­ti­tion for the tax­pay­ers the in-house es­ti­mate be­comes the en­gine that pulls the price up­wards. Once these cor­rupt in­di­vid­u­als ei­ther seek and pay for that es­ti­mate or the in­di­vid­ual in the min­istries of­fer it to the con­trac­tors, the whole sys­tem breaks down. You don’t get the gen­uine ben­e­fit of com­pe­ti­tion,” said Row­ley. He said the Chi­nese had ma­jor ex­per­tise in the con­struc­tion of nu­mer­ous in­ter­changes in their coun­try, which he be­lieves helped re­duce costs.

The con­tract for the project was award­ed in three sec­tions han­dled by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion and Trinida­di­an con­trac­tors Pace Con­struc­tion Ser­vices and Chase En­gi­neer­ing Ltd.

The in­ter­changes, Row­ley said, are geared to­wards re­duc­tion of traf­fic con­ges­tion along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way.

Af­ter the Curepe In­ter­change is con­struct­ed, the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to build six more sim­i­lar struc­tures in­clud­ing over­pass­es at Ma­coya, Pi­ar­co and Waller­field. The Walle­field over­pass, Row­ley said was of ma­jor im­por­tance giv­en the grow­ing in­dus­tri­al es­tate at the eTeck park.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the over­all goal would be to re­move all the traf­fic lights along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way all the way to San­gre Grande.

He al­so an­nounced that there was a plan to build an over­pass along the West­ern Main Road to con­nect it to the Diego Mar­tin High­way, but there was some push­back to that plan from res­i­dents in the area.

Row­ley ad­mit­ted, the many is­sues which lead to the de­layed start of con­struc­tion of the Curepe In­ter­change “are not sto­ries we are proud of.”

He, how­ev­er, de­fend­ed the State’s ap­proach to ac­quir­ing land, as he felt they had prop­er­ly fol­lowed the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act.

“Once we are us­ing the cur­rent Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act no per­son could re­al­ly truth­ful­ly say that they are dis­ad­van­taged or they are op­pressed es­pe­cial­ly when per­sons who should know bet­ter seek to in­clude in that con­ver­sa­tion con­sid­er­a­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion against par­tic­u­lar per­sons who may be of one eth­nic­i­ty or the oth­er. This coun­try must move away from that, we are a coun­try of law. We are a civilised coun­try,” said Row­ley.