Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

With all the trau­ma gen­er­at­ed by the es­ca­lat­ing mur­der rate, and the in­de­scrib­ably greater trau­ma of the threat to Tri­ni US visas by T&T be­ing dubbed (by MSNBC cor­re­spon­dent Mal­colm Nance) a "ter­ror­ist state", a more mun­dane genre of malfea­sance is be­ing crowd­ed out from pub­lic con­scious­ness. I re­fer, of course, to the Gov­ern­ment's threat to au­dit Pan Trin­ba­go, aka, "Way de pan mon­ey gorn?"

Pan Trin­ba­go man of the mo­ment, Michael Joseph, was on the news this week­end say­ing "bring it orn"–the or­gan­i­sa­tion has its au­dit­ed ac­counts wait­ing. The in­ter­est in ac­count­abil­i­ty this year, as in­ti­mat­ed last week, is a new thing as the ap­peal of the whole "Car­ni­val makes a prof­it" scam has worn thin. Now, in­quir­ing minds want to know where the bil­lions hand­ed over to Car­ni­val over the years went.

An an­swer is in the Sixth Re­port of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Min­istries, Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties and State En­ter­pris­es on The Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Op­er­a­tions of the NCC (2013). The hear­ings were held in 2012, and ev­i­dence was tak­en from the NCC TU­CO, the NC­BA and Pan Trin­ba­go. A mem­ber of that com­mit­tee was the now At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Faris Al-Rawi.

That re­port gives the NCC's 2011 sub­ven­tion as $124,692,840. A tidy sum, but ap­par­ent­ly not enough; ad­di­tion­al fund­ing of $61,754,140 was pro­vid­ed for the con­struc­tion of the Grand and North Stands, and "An­cil­lary Works". And, of course, the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti Cul­ti re­mem­bered late some ini­tia­tives that need­ed fund­ing: they got an ad­di­tion­al $46 mil­lion. (There's a ty­po in the re­port, on p 17, which has it at $46,056.)

So a nice round fig­ure of $231 mil­lion for 2011. But whith­er all this mon­ey? The gist is that funds went on re­gion­al car­ni­vals, the Car­ni­val In­sti­tute, Pan Trin­ba­go, the NC­BA, and so forth. The re­port is sea­soned with much moan­ing about the ab­sence of au­dit­ed ac­counts and calls for foren­sic au­dits. But one item which can be ex­am­ined close­ly is con­struc­tion of the Grand Stand. Be­low is an ex­change be­tween the CEO of the NCC, and Com­mit­tee Mem­ber, Prof Harold Ramkissoon.

"Prof Ramkissoon: Can you just tell us what was the ac­tu­al cost of the Grand Stand?

Mr Clarence Moe (NCC CEO): Okay. Let me just give you...

Prof Ramkissoon: Just the Grand Stand.

Mr Moe: Just let me give you–I am go­ing back to the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment if I have it here–$46,087,963; that is the cost, and in the doc­u­ments you would have seen that based on the val­ue–(In­ter­rup­tion)

Prof Ramkissoon: So, there was a ma­jor over­run be­cause the pro­ject­ed cost was $21 mil­lion.

Mr Moe: I can­not say it was a ma­jor over­run, again, you are fast track­ing, and when you are fast track­ing your de­signs must keep pace, it is on­ly af­ter you have done all your de­signs and your bills of quan­ti­ties, that is what has hap­pened. So, ini­tial­ly, to get the fund­ing to start the project, they went out with an es­ti­mate which was pre­pared by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NCC in hav­ing that done.

Prof Ramkissoon: But it has to be a ma­jor over­run, you are talk­ing about a pro­ject­ed cost of $21 mil­lion and the ac­tu­al cost was $40 some­thing mil­lion, that is over 100 per cent over­run.

Mr Moe: Twen­ty one mil­lion dol­lars was a fig­ure not based on draw­ings or bills of quan­ti­ties that was the whole thing; it was not, when we put the full scope of the work in that, you want­ed lounges and you want­ed dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tion, that is what it end­ed up as, and all the de­tails are here for us. I do not think it was a ma­jor over­run. I think it was an un­der es­ti­ma­tion at the time be­cause of the de­tails not be­ing there, and you are fast track­ing.

Madam Chair­man: Could I just ask, what ex­act­ly went out to ten­der?

Mr Moe: Well, noth­ing went out to ten­der. There was a se­lec­tion of con­trac­tors who had worked in the sa­van­nah be­fore..."

There's more of course–138 pages, avail­able for down­load on the par­lia­men­tary web­site–but I'm just fol­low­ing one item. Per­haps Mr Moe's ex­pla­na­tion is not as laugh­able as it reads and $46 mil­lion is a rea­son­able sum for con­struct­ing and dis­man­tling a set of bleach­ers with some dry­wall rooms on top. My ex­per­tise does not ex­tend to the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. How­ev­er, in the notes of ev­i­dence of the eleventh meet­ing of the com­mit­tee, Prof Ramkissoon re­vealed that for 2006, the North Stand was com­plet­ed for $1.8 mil­lion and in 2011, the bud­get­ed sum was $11 mil­lion. (In­fla­tion, I sup­pose.)

The re­port du­ly not­ed the NCC's ten­der­ing process "has been an area of pub­lic dis­qui­et" (sic). But the over­ar­ch­ing point is that this very like­ly de­scribes how Car­ni­val eco­nom­ics works, and it's not like any of this is a se­cret to gov­ern­ment or pub­lic. This doc­u­ment has been avail­able for years on the par­lia­men­tary web­site.

So, in sum: gobs of cash hand­ed out, no ten­ders for ex­pen­di­ture, no au­dit­ed ac­counts re­turned. If this is an ac­cu­rate de­scrip­tion of the Car­ni­val econ­o­my, this whole busi­ness seems, to my ad­mit­ted­ly jaun­diced eye, to be a mas­sive scam. Car­ni­val does not make mon­ey, it con­sumes it in what, more and more, seems like a rit­u­al feed­ing of some pret­ty mas­sive maca­juels.

Fur­ther, any­one whose head isn't wedged in Car­ni­val's sweaty tent could list, off the top of their heads, many ar­eas where the $200 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to this year's de­ba­cle would make a re­al dif­fer­ence–di­lap­i­dat­ed schools, med­i­cines for hos­pi­tals and CDAP, shel­ters for abused women and chil­dren. But what are these com­pared to our Car­ni­val? Maybe 3 Canal could write a song about "Let de Gran-Stan mon­ey come dong". I'm sure that'd help.