Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny, the con­trac­tor se­lect­ed by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to build the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal at a pro­posed cost of $1.6 bil­lion, has been named as one of five Chi­nese en­ter­pris­es or­dered to in­ves­ti­gate shod­dy work in the con­struc­tion of rail­way projects.

The South Chi­na Morn­ing Post re­port­ed yes­ter­day that reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties in Chi­na had or­dered Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion and four oth­er state-owned en­ter­pris­es to fix struc­tur­al prob­lems on 12 rail lines, in­clud­ing the Ning­bo-Taizhou-Wen­zhou high-speed rail­way, where a dead­ly high-speed train crash oc­curred in Ju­ly last year.

The firms have al­so been tem­porar­i­ly banned from bid­ding on fur­ther rail­way con­tracts, the Post re­port­ed. Chi­na's state-owned As­sets Su­per­vi­sion and Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­mis­sion (Sasac) or­dered the five com­pa­nies to re­port "whether there were any il­le­gal or an­ti-com­pet­i­tive prac­tices in their rail­way projects."Chi­nese High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Huang Xing was not in of­fice on Fri­day to ex­plain why Chi­na Rail­way was se­lect­ed to build the Ari­ma hos­pi­tal when its build­ing prac­tices were un­der ques­tion.

Un­der gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments, the for­eign gov­ern­ment is al­lowed the op­por­tu­ni­ty of se­lect­ing a con­trac­tor for the host coun­try.An of­fi­cial from the Chi­nese Po­lit­i­cal Of­fice at the Chi­nese Em­bassy said he would in­ves­ti­gate on what grounds the com­pa­ny was se­lect­ed be­fore com­ment­ing.The com­pa­ny had put in two bids for the project in 2009 and 2012 but on both oc­ca­sions Ude­cott abort­ed the process be­cause all the bids re­ceived were too cost­ly.

In an in­ter­view, pres­i­dent of the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber Lennox Sir­jus­ingh said he was deeply dis­turbed that for­eign con­trac­tors were be­ing se­lect­ed to build the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal."This is the third hos­pi­tal be­ing built by for­eign con­trac­tors. It is dis­turb­ing that large sums of mon­ey are to be paid to for­eign­ers and yet not a sin­gle child from our uni­ver­si­ties will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­sign a ward or a dri­ve­way or a build­ing of that hos­pi­tal," Sir­jus­ingh said.He said the Gov­ern­ment was ig­nor­ing lo­cal con­tent.

Dur­ing a meet­ing last week Wednes­day, Sir­jus­ingh raised the ques­tion of the con­tin­u­ing gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments with Ude­cott chair­man Jear­lean John."I said we were hop­ing that the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal will not be un­der the same con­di­tions. Jear­lean nev­er men­tioned a word that a for­eign con­trac­tor will be cho­sen," Sir­jus­ingh said.

"My cham­ber and con­trac­tors will have to re­vert to burn­ing tyres to get our point across. It is get­ting out of hand. The on­ly place that lo­cal peo­ple are in­volved is the lit­tle ex­ten­sion they are do­ing in the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal."He said dis­cus­sions will be held with the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) and var­i­ous cham­bers to dis­cuss whether le­gal ac­tion could be filed to stop any gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments.

Pres­i­dent of the JCC Afra Ray­mond has al­so raised con­cerns about gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments, say­ing they were detri­men­tal to the econ­o­my.A source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty claimed when ten­ders were ad­ver­tised for the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion put for­ward the high­est bid of $1.6 bil­lion, while two oth­er con­trac­tors bid $1.4 bil­lion and $850 mil­lion."It is strange that Chi­na Rail­way, which had the high­est bid, got the nod," the source added.Ude­cott has de­nied those claims.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day, as calls to his cel­lu­lar phone went unan­swered.Last week, Ari­ma MP Rodger Samuel an­nounced that Cab­i­net had agreed that Ude­cott would ex­e­cute a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Chi­na Rail­way for con­struc­tion of the new hos­pi­tal.He said the same com­pa­ny was al­so con­tract­ed by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to com­plete the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, To­ba­go sev­er­al years ago.

Samuel said the agree­ment re­sult­ed from bi­lat­er­al talks Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar held with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping dur­ing his June vis­it.Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath al­so said Chi­na Rail­way Ltd was al­so among four Chi­nese com­pa­nies in the run­ning for con­struc­tion of six new busi­ness parks to be done with Chi­nese loan-fi­nanc­ing as­sis­tance.

The new parks, sched­uled to be com­plet­ed by De­cem­ber 2014, will be at lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing Re­form, Con­nec­tor Road, Dow Vil­lage, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, Preysal and will utilise 775 acres.

More on CR­CC

Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion is one of the largest con­struc­tion com­pa­nies in Chi­na and one of the top 500 en­ter­pris­es in the world. Al­though it spe­cialis­es in rail­way in­fra­struc­ture con­struc­tion, the com­pa­ny al­so has op­er­a­tions in sur­vey­ing, de­sign, and con­sult­ing; man­u­fac­tur­ing of road main­te­nance ma­chin­ery; and re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment and lo­gis­tics ser­vices re­lat­ed to its main con­struc­tion busi­ness.

In ad­di­tion to rail­way sys­tems, the state-owned cor­po­ra­tion works on high­ways, air­ports, ma­rine ports, hy­dropow­er and wa­ter con­ser­van­cy fa­cil­i­ties, in­dus­tri­al plants, and mu­nic­i­pal projects both at home and abroad.

Ques­tion marks over CR­CC

In April, for­mer Chi­nese rail­way min­is­ter Liu Zhi­jun was charged with cor­rup­tion and abuse of pow­er. The Blooms­berg newslet­ter said Liu presided over the min­istry at a time when mil­lions of yuan were wast­ed or stolen.

"In one case, at least 187 mil­lion yuan was mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed by in­di­vid­u­als or com­pa­nies in­volved in build­ing the high-speed rail line from Bei­jing to Shang­hai, the Na­tion­al Au­dit Of­fice re­port­ed in March 2011. The au­di­tor, which al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ed the rail­way from June to Sep­tem­ber 2011, al­so found that 491 mil­lion yuan was em­bez­zled in land deals tied to the rail­way project," the re­port said.

Ude­cott do­ing due dili­gence re­view

In an in­ter­view, Jear­lean John said no con­tract has yet been signed with Chi­na Rail­way. She said, "There is no con­tract, no mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing and no sign­ing of frame­work agree­ment. Noth­ing is cast in stone. We are now go­ing through the process."Ude­cott's me­dia events man­ag­er Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton-Whyms elab­o­rat­ed on this in an e-mail.

She said giv­en bi­lat­er­al agree­ments be­tween the gov­ern­ments of T&T and the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, which were "fur­ther en­shrined" by the re­cent vis­it by Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed an in­ter­est in the Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny build­ing the hos­pi­tal.

Sta­ple­ton-Whyms al­so said Ude­cott has since been in­struct­ed to do a due dili­gence re­view on the Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny and to de­ter­mine whether it is a vi­able en­ti­ty to con­struct this project.She said the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal project had been ten­dered twice: The first ten­der closed in Ju­ly 2009 and the sec­ond in Ju­ly 2012.In 2009, she said, three con­trac­tors bid for the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal project:

�2 Car­il­lion

�2 Bouygues Ba­ti­ment

�2 Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny.

"This process was ter­mi­nat­ed," she ex­plained, "since all three bids were above Ude­cott's es­ti­mat­ed cost for the then ex­ist­ing scope of works."The bid­ders in 2012 were:

�2 SIS

�2 Ki­er In­fra­struc­ture

�2 Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion­Com­pa­ny

This time there were wide dis­par­i­ties be­tween the bids, so the Ude­cott board de­cid­ed the process should be quashed and the ten­der re-is­sued with bridg­ing doc­u­ments or more de­tailed de­signs."This would en­sure that the pro­pos­als re­ceived were close­ly based on the re­quire­ments of the Min­istry of Health," Sta­ple­ton-Whyms said."The scope of works has been re­de­fined/changed by the Min­istry of Health giv­en the grow­ing needs of the pop­u­lace."

She said the claim that the Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny's bid was $1.6 bil­lion was to­tal­ly in­ac­cu­rate, as was the state­ment that it was the high­est bid­der.