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Saturday, August 9, 2025

Partnership must learn from NAR mistakes

by

20121013

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship regime must learn from the lessons of the failed Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion ad­min­is­tra­tion if it is to com­plete its first five-year term of of­fice. So ad­vis­es Dr Car­son Charles, for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty and a NAR min­is­ter. The 56-year-old en­gi­neer, who is chair­man of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co), is cred­it­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for hold­ing the PP team to­geth­er.

Q:?Dr Charles, is the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion about to go the way of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment?

A: (Rock­ing back in his chair and laugh­ing aloud at his Mel­bourne Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice Thurs­day evening) That's a good one, Clevon. But no. No. The NAR's case was quite unique and I don't think we are about to re­peat that his­to­ry. But the PP has to make sure and learn the lessons of the past-of the NAR-and the main les­son is that we re­al­ly have to keep unit­ed, stick to­geth­er and we have to have high­er stan­dards than the PNM.

Is the PP demon­strat­ing this high­er stan­dard, giv­en the num­ber of mis­steps be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced so far in their tenure?

(Gen­tly stroking his face from the fore­head) Well, mis­step is a term that has be­come pop­u­lar now, eh?

But it is hu­man to make mis­takes as we go along and un­for­tu­nate­ly all of the mis­takes had to do with peo­ple say­ing the wrong thing at the wrong time. But if you look at the ac­tu­al run­ning of the coun­try it is do­ing well and there is room for im­prove­ment. T&T is tak­ing up speed and if you look at where the coun­try was head­ing in 2010...

Can you stick a pin there and let us deal with Nid­co? What is Nid­co and what are your prin­ci­pal ar­eas of busi­ness?

OK. The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, a spe­cial-pur­pose state en­ter­prise, was cre­at­ed in late 2005.

These en­ti­ties have been get­ting some se­ri­ous crit­i­cisms from cer­tain quar­ters. What makes this com­pa­ny stand out from the rest?

Lis­ten, it is like any­thing...sure we get crit­i­cised, some of which went to my pre­de­ces­sor and in due course I am sure I will get my own share (half-smil­ing). At the end of the day peo­ple will judge you by the out­come of what you have de­liv­ered or what you have not de­liv­ered. These com­pa­nies were set up for a spe­cial pur­pose, you can make good use of them but they could be cor­rupt­ed and they were cor­rupt­ed in the past. Our busi­ness is to make sure we do not cor­rupt them now.

The main busi­ness of Nid­co?

Nid­co is a ser­vant of the Min­istry of Works. Vir­tu­al­ly all their ma­jor projects are done by this com­pa­ny. It was set up by Gov­ern­ment to ac­cel­er­ate gov­ern­ment's pro­gramme of de­vel­op­ment and de­liv­ery of in­fra­struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly ma­jor projects, in a dri­ve to get us to a more de­vel­oped state. Great em­pha­sis is be­ing placed on high­ways...the trans­port sec­tor.

Nid­co did have a rapid-rail project but we don't have it these days, and at some point in time Gov­ern­ment will de­cide on some form of rail that makes sense.

Why did this ad­min­is­tra­tion dump the orig­i­nal rapid rail-project?

Be­cause it just did not make sense and let me give you some facts about it. This project was cost­ing this coun­try US$7 bil­lion, not count­ing ac­qui­si­tion, su­per­vi­sion, project man­age­ment costs and all the oth­er costs to add to those. Who in their right mind would think that Trinidad and To­ba­go, which has nev­er even done a project cost­ing $7 bil­lion (TT) is go­ing to take up a project of US$7 bil­lion? It was a fic­tion that cost us $500 mil­lion (TT) which has gone down the drain.

How come?

You know why? Be­cause they did not do a fea­si­bil­i­ty study. Some­body went to some part of the world, saw rapid rail in ser­vice and he de­cid­ed he must have one here, too. These guys award­ed a con­tract and I heard Row­ley say­ing the gov­ern­ment at the time was about to in­vite ten­ders af­ter they had al­ready award­ed the con­tract to a for­eign con­sor­tium to de­sign, build, op­er­ate and main­tain.

What is very de­press­ing Clevon, is that af­ter the de­sign was done with­out do­ing any fea­si­bil­i­ty study they then pre­sent­ed the gov­ern­ment with that hefty pric­ing bill which this gov­ern­ment could not af­ford.

Half a bil­lion dol­lars just went down the drain and no one can be held ac­count­able?

I think the pop­u­la­tion held the last ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­count­able by vot­ing them out of of­fice. The idea of hav­ing a rapid rail is not a bad idea but that par­tic­u­lar project was mad­ness and we can­not go back to that. What must be done is what should have been done in the first place-a fea­si­bil­i­ty study which would tell us from the out­set, among oth­er salient points, what the cost of build­ing the project would have been.

What is the lat­est on the con­tro­ver­sial Point Fortin High­way and is the Re-Route protest stand­ing in the way of the project mov­ing for­ward rapid­ly?

No. They have their right to protest and we are pro­ceed­ing with the first phase of the project. And if you want an idea of the amount of projects Nid­co is cur­rent­ly deal­ing with at this time: (leaf­ing through a file in his desk) we have the high­ways, a lot of drainage projects, re­tain­ing walls, we are prepar­ing for the Mamoral Dam and so on.

Dr Charles, one of the crit­i­cisms against these com­pa­nies is the ap­par­ent un­sat­is­fac­to­ry pro­cure­ment process...

That hasn't got any­thing to do with the com­pa­nies, it has to do with peo­ple who op­er­ate the sys­tem. We have a ten­den­cy to throw out the ba­by with the bath; when some­thing goes wrong we want to change the sys­tem, we want con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, we want a new law. The whole Par­lia­ment makes a mis­take, okay? The Prime Min­is­ter and oth­ers have apol­o­gised. Ex­cel­lent. Very good.

Where are you go­ing with this?

It was a big mis­take, it was hu­man er­ror but you can­not fix that with a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. It is peo­ple who are en­trust­ed with cer­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ty who are li­able to make mis­takes and when this hap­pens the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble ad­mit it and they pay at­ten­tion in the fu­ture to what they are do­ing-in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader.

He can't be se­ri­ous be­cause he made a mis­take, too; he was sleep­ing on the job. Un­der our sys­tem you are the watch­dog. So you failed not on­ly your own sup­port­ers but you failed the coun­try, too. So you have to apol­o­gise, too. It is ei­ther you did not read it or did not have your ad­vis­ers look at it; you just vot­ed on it. How can you be se­ri­ous­ly think­ing that we can­not get an apol­o­gy from you?

Every­body should ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what hap­pened and apol­o­gise to the coun­try and pay more at­ten­tion in the fu­ture to what comes to the Par­lia­ment.

Ear­li­er, Dr Charles, you were say­ing that the coun­try was head­ing down the wrong path in 2010...

Yes. (Frown­ing) if we cast our minds back you would re­call we were go­ing down a crazy road. We were spend­ing mon­ey which we did not have, build­ing tall build­ings that up to this date we still can­not oc­cu­py them, you know? We don't have the mon­ey to fin­ish those build­ings.

Are you sug­gest­ing no prop­er plan­ning went in­to the con­struc­tion of these ed­i­fices, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the wa­ter­front?

It was a dream some­body had, who thought we would have mon­ey for­ev­er and we could be­come a de­vel­oped coun­try by go­ing all over the world see­ing tall build­ings and you want to have them here, too. The same way they thought we would not be a de­vel­oped coun­try if we didn't have a rapid-rail sys­tem, so you bring a team of for­eign­ers to build and over­see the project. Not a sin­gle lo­cal en­gi­neer was in­volved in that project.

You said the PP should learn from the lessons of the past?

I think we all should learn from our past, and of course the peo­ple would want to see the Gov­ern­ment avoid some of the er­rors they are see­ing and I would not com­ment on whether they are tak­ing long to learn or not. A lot of ef­fort has been made to hold the team to­geth­er and we all should cred­it the Prime Min­is­ter and who­ev­er she has help­ing her in keep­ing the team to­geth­er.

You are say­ing the biggest fail­ure of the NAR was its in­abil­i­ty to hold the team to­geth­er?

(Em­phat­i­cal­ly) Yes. And be­cause this was so, every­body was able to pick it apart.

Is the PM ca­pa­ble of con­tin­u­ing to hold the PP to­geth­er?

So far so good. She has demon­strat­ed the po­lit­i­cal savvy to hold them to­geth­er and I re­peat, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be giv­en cred­it for hav­ing the po­lit­i­cal will and courage to take ac­tion when and where nec­es­sary, in­clud­ing ter­mi­nat­ing the em­ploy­ment of cer­tain Cab­i­net mem­bers who were found want­i­ng for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

Un­like oth­er prime min­is­ters, I be­lieve she is more in­ter­est­ed in the wel­fare of the coun­try rather than sweep­ing un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iour by top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials un­der the car­pet.


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