Renu­ka Singh

The now con­tro­ver­sial Beetham Waste­water Re­cy­cling Plant was a project first ap­proved by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). A Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing, ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian dat­ed Jan­u­ary 6, 2006, shows an agree­ment be­tween the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (NEC) and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).Con­tained with­in the eight-year-old agree­ment is a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause that bars ei­ther par­ty from pub­li­cis­ing any por­tion of the MoU.

"Each par­ty un­der­takes that all in­for­ma­tion here­to or here­inafter fur­nished or made avail­able to any one of them by the oth­er in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to the MoU or any oth­er in­for­ma­tion which may from time to time be iden­ti­fied by the terms of this para­graph will be kept strict­ly con­fi­den­tial and will not be dis­closed or di­vulged to any per­son (oth­er than its rep­re­sen­ta­tives) and that it will pro­ceed that its rep­re­sen­ta­tives will not dis­close or di­vulge same.

No news, pub­lic an­nounce­ments, ad­ver­tise­ment or pub­lic­i­ty con­cern­ing this MoU shall be made by any of the par­ties here­to with­out pri­or writ­ten con­sent to the oth­er par­ty," the three-page doc­u­ment states.In the MoU both par­ties agreed to eight points, but in­clud­ed the need for the "nec­es­sary Cab­i­net ap­provals."The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that PNM Cab­i­net did give its ap­proval back in No­vem­ber 2007 but utilised a ma­rine pipeline through the Gulf of Paria in­stead of an over­land pipeline.

The cur­rent con­tract was award­ed to Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SISL).When asked about the PNM ap­proval, Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed but said it was not the PNM that de­cid­ed to "in­flate the price and give it to SIS."