Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert de­scribes gov­ern­ment's ad­ver­tise­ment invit­ing Ex­pres­sions of In­ter­est in the fi­nanc­ing, de­sign, con­struc­tion, op­er­a­tion and main­te­nance of a light tran­sit sys­tem from City Gate to Ari­ma as "a pap­pyshow."

He said the ad­ver­tise­ment is in breach of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act. He said Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj's "in­ex­pe­ri­ence" was be­ing dis­played. Im­bert was speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion's bi-week­ly news con­fer­ence, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. He said the gov­ern­ment has on­ly made "hys­ter­i­cal state­ments" on the mat­ter. "I chal­lenge the min­is­ter to tell me that this ad­ver­tise­ment is not in breach of Sec­tion Four of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act and I know the an­swer al­ready."

He said it was well-es­tab­lished in Trinidad and To­ba­go that no gov­ern­ment min­istry could in­vite ten­ders, ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est or re­quest for pro­pos­als. He said: "You could dress it up and put it on a plate with peas and rice...it is still part of a ten­der. "No gov­ern­ment min­istry can ini­ti­ate ten­ders pro­ce­dures where the val­ue ex­ceeds $2 mil­lion and you're talk­ing about a $5 bil­lion project here." He said the Op­po­si­tion had been work­ing along­side Gov­ern­ment to re­form the pro­cure­ment sys­tem and thought gov­ern­ment had been act­ing in "good faith" to elim­i­nate cor­rup­tion, favouritism and nepo­tism, but the ad­ver­tise­ment put "a lie" to all the work done in the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Pro­cure­ment. Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley lat­er an­nounced that the Op­po­si­tion was with­draw­ing its in­volve­ment from the com­mit­tee.

"This is an af­front to the con­cept of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty," Im­bert said. Mean­while, Row­ley said he was not go­ing to be gen­er­ous like Im­bert to say Ma­haraj was in­ex­pe­ri­enced. He said: "If it is that we have in Trinidad and To­ba­go, a gov­ern­ment where a min­is­ter, on the ba­sis of in­ex­pe­ri­ence, could en­gage the State in this mat­ter in such a way and not get him­self pulled up by the Prime Min­is­ter im­me­di­ate­ly, then some­thing is wrong be­cause one would have thought that any project of any na­ture re­quir­ing this kind of in­volve­ment with the pri­vate sec­tor; this kind of in­volve­ment by the gov­ern­ment with re­spect to in­vest­ment, ap­provals and waivers that it would first get the ap­proval and clear­ance of the Cab­i­net."