Shal­iza Has­sanali

One of two tow­ers at the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front which cost tax­pay­ers $1.3 bil­lion is leak­ing. Floor 23, Tow­er D-sit­u­at­ed next to the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel and which hous­es the Par­lia­ment and the of­fice of Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj-is leak­ing. Ma­haraj, in his maid­en con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, said while the PNM has been boast­ing of its work at the Wa­ter­front, Tow­er D which was used to host the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and CHOGM in 2009, is in need of re­pair. Tow­ers D and C which re­mained emp­ty for two years, Ma­haraj said, had cost $1.3 bil­lion with an ad­di­tion­al $42 mil­lion to out­fit.

Ma­haraj spoke about the el­e­va­tors at Tow­er D which have not worked in the last two weeks. Out­lin­ing some of the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with his min­istry, Ma­haraj said from Oc­to­ber 2009 to Sep­tem­ber 2010, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) showed a li­a­bil­i­ty of $478 mil­lion. "The monies were tak­en as loans un­der the PNM." Belmer Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny which ranked fourth in the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion, Ma­haraj said, won the con­tract to con­struct the lo­cal food court. "No eval­u­a­tion for the fi­nan­cial pro­pos­al could be found," he added. Ma­haraj said al­though Quan­tum Con­struc­tion had the same score in the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion as Bel­mar and a low­er over­all ten­der sum, Belmer was award­ed the con­tract.

The con­tract sum was $10 mil­lion but Belmer was paid $18 mil­lion, Ma­haraj said. "That amounts to an 80 per cent in­crease from the orig­i­nal price." Ma­haraj said vari­a­tion of a con­tract is ten per cent. Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, $.5 mil­lion was spent on an un­used um­brel­la canopy in the food court that cov­ered on­ly three dou­bles ven­dors. He al­so said no con­tract for the de­sign and su­per­vi­sion of the food court could be found, yet $.8 mil­lion was paid to Rey­nald and As­so­ciates.

From 2008 to 2010, Ma­haraj said, the PNM spent $5 bil­lion on the pur­chase of wa­ter taxis, some of which nev­er sailed and had to be re­paired. "What is our op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­ture added to that cost of $48 mil­lion per an­num?" The rev­enue from the wa­ter taxi ser­vice, Ma­haraj dis­closed, is $5 mil­lion. "So we spend­ing $48 mil­lion to op­er­ate but get­ting $5 mil­lion in re­turn." The sub­sidy per pas­sen­ger is $115 one way. How­ev­er, he point­ed out that the sub­sidy to go from Trinidad to To­ba­go via CAL was $50.