Local Content Chamber President Lennox Sirjuesingh wants more local content to be used in construction of the controversial Point Fortin Highway project. He says foreign contractors are placing their local counterparts at a disadvantage. In his address at the chamber's awards dinner on Saturday night at businessman Derrick?Smith's Vistabella residence, Sirjuesingh said there was no question about the competence of local contractors.
The Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway and the Uriah Butler Highway, he said, were both constructed by local contractors. "Trinidad and Tobago contractors certainly have the competence. What has to be built? Flyovers, bridges, tunnels? Our contractors cannot do it?" he asked.
Sirjuesingh said the University of the West?Indies Debe campus is another major project that should have more local content. He said with foreign contractors being awarded large projects, local contractors were being financially challenged.
"When a Chinese company is paying workers $10 a day and we have to pay $150 a day our contractors are disadvantaged. The second disadvantage-the profit. With a foreign company (profit) is expatriated. It does not stay here. If 50 per cent of that money stays here it means that money is turning around here," he said.
Sirjuesingh said the chamber intends to aggressively pursue local content legislation next year. He said they have been looking at local content legislation from various countries to determine which provisions will be applicable to T&T.
He said some of the issues the Chamber will be looking at are procurement, accountability and monitoring "because it is one thing to say we have 40 per cent local content, but then we find it is 40 per cent of the base jobs that is given. That is not what we want." Public Administration Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, who attended the dinner, commended the chamber for its work.
She agreed that local content legislation was needed and it was being reviewed by the Government. The San Fernando West MP suggested that the chamber produce a proposal on what it would like included in the legislation. However, she hastened to add that rushing to the legislative phase could be problematic.
"We cannot go to legislation without developing the policy, and from the policy, the policy objectives we go out to consultation on them. Once we have done that, the legislation will form out of it. I think we rush to the legislative route without having that (policy) formulated properly. You would find that afterwards the road to legislation is much easier if we have the policy worked out," Seepersad-Bachan said.
The minister described T&T's improved rating on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) as a success for the People's Partnership Government. At the awards ceremony, Guardian Media Ltd was unanimously voted Most Outstanding Media House for its coverage of local content in the T&T Guardian, its television station CNC 3 and its radio network, TBC.
Businessman Derrick Smith received the Founder of the Year award and Douglas Boyce the Director of the Year award.