Shal­iza Has­sanali

New­ly-ap­point­ed chair­man of Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Ltd (NQ) Kesh­war Ma­haraj has asked for a foren­sic au­dit in­to the state-owned com­pa­ny af­ter find­ing out that prop­er pro­ce­dures may not have been fol­lowed in award­ing con­tracts.

The re­quest for the au­dit comes four months af­ter Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi called on NQ's then chair­man Mi­tra Ramkhelawan to clear the air on how much was spent to pur­chase a "re­fur­bished" Vol­vo ex­ca­va­tor which was list­ed on one set of doc­u­ments as cost­ing US$317,968.75 and on an­oth­er as US$92,000.

Days af­ter the ex­pos�, Ramkhelawan, who had sus­pend­ed NQ's CEO San­dra Fer­nan­dez on the ba­sis of her qual­i­fi­ca­tions, was fired by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai. This led to the col­lapse of the en­tire board.

Ramkhelawan has main­tained his in­no­cence against al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and mis­man­age­ment at the state or­gan­i­sa­tion.

On Thurs­day, Ma­haraj said the Fraud Squad in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pur­chase of the ex­ca­va­tor was on­go­ing and from time to time they would re­quest doc­u­ments from NQ.

"And there will be more in­ves­ti­ga­tions," Ma­haraj said, re­fus­ing to say in­to what or who.

"We are go­ing to set up a foren­sic au­dit in­to the com­pa­ny and leave it for the peo­ple who are tech­ni­cal­ly sound to deal with it."

Ma­haraj said NQ has since tak­en steps to en­sure that over-in­voic­ing did not re-oc­cur.

"As a mat­ter of fact, one of the things we are do­ing now (is that) every sin­gle per­son who en­gages a ser­vice with this com­pa­ny must have a con­tract."

Ma­haraj: Lack of prop­er­man­age­ment checks

He said the sys­tems at NQ did not al­low prop­er man­age­ment checks.

"It was some­what on au­topi­lot. In fact, when we came here, we had a lot of arrange­ments that were done by 'shake hand.'"

Told that this was what the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment fought against in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, Ma­haraj said, "When we re­alised cer­tain things were not go­ing the way it was sup­posed to go, that is why a new board was put in place to deal with this type of sit­u­a­tion and not to al­low this to hap­pen."

Asked how many con­tracts were giv­en out with prop­er pro­ce­dures, Ma­haraj said NQ was do­ing an eval­u­a­tion on that at present.

"We want to cor­rect all the wrongs. In the past peo­ple used to do things in a way that was not re­al­ly in line with good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance. And those are the things we are try­ing to in­tro­duce here so we can get val­ue for mon­ey."

Asked if many wrongs had been com­mit­ted, Ma­haraj said, "I would say there was a fair amount of mis­ad­ven­tures tak­ing place. In the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance we need to tight­en the screws all around. You know, there was sab­o­tage tak­ing place and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues."

Was NQ faced with cor­rup­tion be­fore his tenure?

Ma­haraj said a lot of things need­ed to be checked, in­clud­ing the pur­chase of the ex­ca­va­tor.If his board had been at NQ ear­li­er, he said, things would have been man­aged dif­fer­ent­ly.

Some of the things Ma­haraj said he was not pleased with were the ef­fi­cien­cy of its op­er­a­tions, as a lot of se­nior posts in the com­pa­ny re­mained un­filled and there was low staff morale.

NQ re­cov­ers US$110,000from ex­ca­va­tor pur­chase

He said the on­ly pos­i­tive thing that came out of the ex­ca­va­tor fi­as­co was the re­pay­ment of US$110,000 by Glob­al Trade and Fi­nanc­ing, which had fa­cil­i­tat­ed a trans­ac­tion for the pur­chase of the equip­ment eight months ago.

NQ was ex­pect­ed to pay US$317,968.75 but its bankers er­ro­neous­ly wire-trans­ferred US$427,968.75, an over-pay­ment of US$110,000.

Ma­haraj said the US$110,000 was to make ad­di­tion­al pur­chas­es.

"I thought it was not wise to have our mon­ey sit­ting there on a prospec­tive pur­chase or­der so I re­quest­ed the mon­ey back."

The mon­ey was wire-trans­ferred in­to NQ's ac­count on De­cem­ber 27, 2013.

Told he was per­ceived as a pup­pet, Ma­haraj said the on­ly rea­son he took the job was be­cause the Gov­ern­ment need­ed some­one on board with a clean pair of hands, and no one could ac­cuse him of be­ing cor­rupt or bring­ing the cor­po­ra­tion in­to dis­re­pute.

"They know what I had done at the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion as chair­man. Not a sin­gle per­son can say that I took a soft drink from a con­trac­tor.

"If any­one tries to in­flu­ence me I would tell them where to get off. I do not need this job to be a pup­pet."

In his first meet­ing with Ram­nar­ine, Ma­haraj said, he in­formed his di­rec­tors that if they were look­ing to make mon­ey at NQ they should look for an­oth­er job.

NQ to get a $20 mil­lion­crush­ing plant

By Sep­tem­ber, Ma­haraj said, NQ will have its own crush­ing plant for Scott's Quar­ry, which has a nat­ur­al re­serve of $4 bil­lion.

The de­ci­sion to pur­chase the plant was fi­nalised by NQ's board and lat­er dis­cussed with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine be­fore he left for Chi­na on Fri­day with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The move comes four months af­ter the con­tract of Malaysian-based Sun­way In­ter­na­tion­al came to an end.

NQ had ex­pressed an in­ter­est in pur­chas­ing Sun­way's plant for $20 mil­lion, but things did not work out, Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj said they ap­proached Ram­nar­ine to pur­chase a $20 mil­lion plant through a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment in Chi­na.

Once the plant is in­stalled, Ma­haraj said, NQ will no longer send out ten­ders seek­ing the ser­vices of busi­ness­es to pro­duce ag­gre­gate and lime­stone at Scott's Quar­ry, but would un­der­take the job in or­der to get back on track and re­main vi­able.

Ag­gre­gate is used in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and is a key ma­te­r­i­al in road paving.

Will this re­sult in an in­crease of ag­gre­gate prices?

Ma­haraj said it was not one of NQ's pri­or­i­ties. "How­ev­er, if we have to in­crease the cost it would very min­i­mal."

Since his ap­point­ment, Ma­haraj said, no one has ex­pressed an in­ter­est in op­er­at­ing Scott's Quar­ry.

Last No­vem­ber, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that at least one con­trac­tor–Jusam­co Pavers Ltd, head­ed by Ju­nior Sam­my–wrote to Ramkhelawan on Au­gust 2, ex­press­ing an in­ter­est in op­er­at­ing Scott's Quar­ry and ask­ing to be "favoured."

NQ owns and man­ages the quar­ry in Blan­chisseuse, and Tu­rure Quar­ry which can gen­er­ate rev­enues in ex­cess of $200 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

In the in­ter­im, Ma­haraj said, NQ will bring in small op­er­a­tors to pick up the slack un­til the plant is up and run­ning.

"Our op­tion is to get our plant that can de­liv­er more out­put."

Sun­way pro­duced on av­er­age 500 tonnes of ag­gre­gate an hour.

No par­ty hack for CEO po­si­tion

NQ in­tends to re­tain a re­cruit­ing com­pa­ny to se­lect its new CEO. The com­pa­ny will ad­ver­tise the CEO post, do in­ter­views and make its fi­nal pick by the end of April.

"It would be in­de­pen­dent peo­ple so that we have no in­flu­ence over the se­lec­tion process," Ma­haraj said.

He said NQ's HR de­part­ment has been work­ing to speed up the re­cruit­ment process, since the com­pa­ny has been with­out a CEO for four months.

"We want to have the ap­point­ment trans­par­ent. We do not want to hear that we put a par­ty hack. We will di­vorce our­selves from that. This thing will be prop­er­ly done. We will hire a re­cruit­ing com­pa­ny and let them take the de­ci­sion on in­ter­views and work with­in the com­pa­ny's guide­lines. The board would rat­i­fy their de­ci­sion."

The new CEO will re­place San­dra Fer­nan­dez, who was sus­pend­ed last Oc­to­ber by Ramkhelawan. NQ has agreed to pay Fer­nan­dez in an out-of-court set­tle­ment, which Ma­haraj re­fused to dis­close, but in­sist­ed it was not $800,000 as re­port­ed.

Asked if the new CEO will be paid a month­ly salary of $48,000, sim­i­lar to what Fer­nan­dez took home, Ma­haraj said it all de­pends on the in­di­vid­ual's qual­i­fi­ca­tions and skills.

Chair­man's $510,000 Nis­san Pathfind­er up for sale

A $510,000 Nis­san Pathfind­er which NQ pur­chased for its chair­man is up for sale. Once sold, Ma­haraj said, NQ would use the mon­ey to buy a bus to trans­port work­ers to and from its quar­ry site in Tu­rure, San­gre Grande.

Ma­haraj said the de­ci­sion to sell the three-year-old PCT se­ries Pathfind­er was a tak­en by the board af­ter staff com­plained that it was dif­fi­cult to reach the quar­ry site at night.

"So one of the de­ci­sions we took was the Pathfind­er, which was pur­chased for the use of the chair­man, I have asked them to re­turn it to the com­pa­ny (the agent), so we could get a bus for the work­ers."

As chair­man, Ma­haraj said, he be­lieves he is not en­ti­tled to dri­ve a com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle.

"I get trav­el­ling and I have my per­son­al ve­hi­cle which I use."

Ma­haraj said he has asked NQ and the com­pa­ny from which the Pathfind­er was pur­chased to do an eval­u­a­tion to de­ter­mine its val­ue. If the bus is more ex­pen­sive, NQ will pay the dif­fer­ence.

"But I think a bus would be cheap­er than the Pathfind­er. So we would look at the cost-ef­fec­tive­ness of it, whether a trade-in might be good."

Last Oc­to­ber, Ramkhelawan, in an Ex­press ar­ti­cle, said as chair­man, he suf­fered the in­dig­ni­ty of us­ing the Pathfind­er, which he said had tyres as smooth as glass.

"Nor­mal­ly in my area, I bend my head while I am in it. It's a bit dis­grace­ful," Ramkhelawan said.

Ramkhelawan: Every­thing was done above board

On Fri­day, Ramkhelawan said every de­ci­sion the board made un­der his tenure was done above board and in a trans­par­ent man­ner.

"No con­tract was award­ed ex­cept two that were pub­licly ten­dered and it fol­lowed every pro­ce­dure. I have no idea what Mr Ma­haraj is speak­ing about."

Ramkhelawan said he nev­er signed any cheques at NQ.

"What I have to ac­count for is what is in the board min­utes."