Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The Op­po­si­tion has with­drawn its in­volve­ment from the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee-Leg­isla­tive Pro­pos­als on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and on the Re­peal­ing and Re­plac­ing of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act. Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley made that an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day while crit­i­cis­ing Gov­ern­ment for be­ing "de­ceit­ful, cor­rupt and dys­func­tion­al." Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment was not in­ter­est­ed in fix­ing T&T's pub­lic pro­cure­ment arrange­ments.

"From that stand­point we will now with­draw from the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment and al­low the Gov­ern­ment to bring to the Par­lia­ment on its own what­ev­er it wants to bring and we will treat with it in the Par­lia­ment when they bring it." Row­ley was speak­ing at his bi-week­ly news con­fer­ence Charles Street, Port-of-Spain.

He spoke of a 36-page con­tract signed by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs on De­cem­ber 29 last year and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of T&T Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny Ltd (TTAS) signed on De­cem­ber 26 last year for a law en­force­ment avi­a­tion pi­lot project.

The TTAS, which was in­cor­po­rat­ed on Ju­ly 14, 2011 was ex­pect­ed to sup­ply 720 hours use of a Zenith CH750 Air Scout Air­craft over a 12–week eval­u­a­tion pe­ri­od at a cost of $US140,000. Its di­rec­tors are list­ed as Dirk Barnes, a sol­dier of 73 Valle Dri­ve, Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua; Kevon Stafford, a sol­dier of LP 59 Hut­ton St, Cumana Vil­lage, To­co, and Daniel Con­don, an air­line pi­lot, of 2050 E Mal­lo­ry Street, Mesa, AZ 85213, USA. Row­ley al­so spoke of an ad­ver­tise­ment pub­lished by the Min­istry of Trans­port invit­ing ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est for the fi­nanc­ing, de­sign, con­struc­tion, op­er­a­tion and main­te­nance of a light tran­sit sys­tem from City Gate to Ari­ma. He said Gov­ern­ment has shown "a pat­tern of be­hav­iour" when it came to pro­cure­ment. He said the PNM "fell" large­ly be­cause of its treat­ment of ac­cept­ing pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures. Row­ley list­ed the NP is­sue in­volv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gopaul fam­i­ly; de­vel­op­ment of In­vad­er's Bay; the Rapid Rail ad­ver­tise­ment and the air­craft in­volv­ing Gibbs as mat­ters of grave con­cern. He said the lat­ter "was even more trou­bling."

He added: "If you have cor­rupt prac­tices tak­ing place, then you send for the po­lice but what do you do when the po­lice is in­volved in mat­ters that are not sat­is­fac­to­ry to you?" Row­ley said the mat­ter was now "spin­ning out of con­trol." He pre­sent­ed a let­ter, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 2010, writ­ten by man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Navi-Comm Avion­ics Ltd (NAL) Ed­die Dalls­ingh to Gibbs re­quest­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a pre­sen­ta­tion of the light sport air­craft. The let­ter stat­ed cost was $35 an hour. How­ev­er, Gibbs re­spond­ed on De­cem­ber 31 2010 say­ing Dalls­ingh's pro­pos­al should be for­ward­ed to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Row­ley said "con­tact and con­ver­sa­tions" with NAL dat­ed back to 2003, how­ev­er, Gibbs went ahead with a con­tract by "fly by night" com­pa­ny TTAS. He said his cal­cu­la­tions showed that TTAS was charg­ing $1,250 an hour for the same ser­vice of­fered by NAL.