Shal­iza?Has­sanali

The board of the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL) has de­cid­ed to ter­mi­nate the em­ploy­ment of five man­agers fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of two foren­sic au­dits in­to its op­er­a­tions.

Those fired on Mon­day were Ve­da Ram­nath, man­ag­er of pro­cure­ment, Ria Nar­i­nesingh, di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er of fi­nance: Frank Ma­habir, man­ag­er of main­te­nence and re­pairs, Suren­dra Bal­go­b­in, man­ag­er of sec­ondary schools and De­va Shar­ma, man­ag­er of im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Pri­or to the fir­ings, Ram­nath, Nar­i­nesingh, Ma­habir, Bal­go­b­in and Shar­ma had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave.

The news comes sev­en months af­ter a se­cret "con­tract mill­house" was dis­cov­ered at the EF­CL's head of­fice in Mar­aval, which re­sult­ed in armed guards be­ing called in to se­cure a moun­tain of po­ten­tial­ly damn­ing ev­i­dence which point­ed to the il­le­gal man­u­fac­tur­ing of back­dat­ed ten­der doc­u­ments worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.

The re­cent fir­ings bring the to­tal num­ber of EF­CL man­agers who were axed to sev­en in the last four months.Yes­ter­day, both board chair­man, Arnold Pig­gott, and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, An­tho­ny Gar­cia, con­firmed the man­agers were ter­mi­nat­ed.

"Con­se­quence up­on all the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to us as a board... the board, hav­ing lost con­fi­dence in the five se­nior man­agers, took a de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate their em­ploy­ment, ef­fec­tive Mon­day, June 6," Pig­gott said in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view.He al­so ad­mit­ted that EF­CL cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Ver­i­ty By­noe, had re­signed ahead of the con­clu­sion of the au­dit.

"The board has tak­en a very se­ri­ous view of its man­date to re­store the EF­CL to good gov­er­nance and fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline in the or­gan­i­sa­tion," Pig­gott told the T&T Guardian.

How­ev­er, Gar­cia said the de­ci­sion to axe the five was as a "re­sult of in­ves­ti­ga­tions that were con­duct­ed in­to an in­ter­nal au­dit, aris­ing out of rec­om­men­da­tions that were made... those per­sons were ter­mi­nat­ed."He added the man­agers had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave by the EF­CL a cou­ple months ago. He said a num­ber of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties were found at the EF­CL which re­sult­ed in two foren­sic au­dits be­ing com­mis­sioned by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

"Two au­dits were done...an in­ter­nal and foren­sic au­dit. Aris­ing out of those au­dits there were suf­fi­cient grounds to ter­mi­nate those per­sons. A process had to be en­tered in­to, that process would have en­tailed they (man­agers) hav­ing ap­peared be­fore a tri­bunal. All those things were done," Gar­cia said.

The au­dits were done by in­ter­na­tion­al ac­count­ing firm, Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, which took snap­shots of the sys­tems used in the "mill­house."Asked what was un­earthed in the au­dits, Gar­cia said: "What I am pre­pared to say at this point is yes, there were ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that were found." He stayed clear of an­swer­ing if the au­dit found any lev­el of cor­rup­tion re­gard­ing how con­trac­tors were paid.

The EF­CL owes its con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly $800 mil­lion.Ad­mit­ting that he re­ceived a copy of the au­dits two months ago, Gar­cia said he could not dis­close its con­tents. "It is un­der con­fi­den­tial cov­er which I must ob­serve. I can't re­veal what was out­lined," he added.Gar­cia said the min­istry's le­gal team had al­so ex­am­ined the au­dits.

"I don't know what course of ac­tion those five per­sons would take. If they de­cide to chal­lenge their ter­mi­na­tions it means we can­not go out and ad­ver­tise their posts like that. We have to look at what will hap­pen first," he not­ed.

Gar­cia al­so con­firmed that Shah and Ma­haraj have since tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the min­istry for their dis­missals.

"I don't know what is the out­come of that," Gar­cia said.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands, how­ev­er, that the au­dit turned up a ques­tion­able arrange­ment over pay­ment to con­trac­tors.

A source close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said it was dis­cov­ered that when the min­istry made pay­ments avail­able to con­trac­tors who had com­plet­ed their jobs, those cheques were with­held and in­stead for­ward­ed to oth­er con­trac­tors who had ei­ther not yet start­ed jobs or were in the ear­ly stages of their con­tracts.

Some $100 mil­lion is said to be still owed to con­trac­tors who were af­fect­ed by that prac­tice.The source said it was a good thing the new board dis­cov­ered the "se­cret room" and ini­ti­at­ed the au­dits, adding it al­so worked co­he­sive­ly and swift­ly to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion.

'Se­cret room' find sparked over­haul

Back in No­vem­ber 2015, the T&T Guardian had re­port­ed that four se­lect em­ploy­ees were hired to cre­ate con­tracts and ten­der doc­u­ments for sev­er­al ex­ist­ing projects which were al­ready paid for in full.This was be­ing done, ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny in­sid­ers, to val­i­date the ten­der­ing process­es to make them ap­pear trans­par­ent and le­gal.

The em­ploy­ees were do­ing that ac­tiv­i­ty in a "se­cret room" in an­oth­er part of the build­ing at the EF­CL head­quar­ters and were on­ly dis­cov­ered when the then new­ly-in­stalled board was tour­ing the build­ing.Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the se­cret con­tract mill­house, the EF­CL sus­pend­ed its CEO, Shar­ma Ma­haraj, and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Ki­ran Shah over claims of im­pro­pri­ety.

In Feb­ru­ary, Ma­haraj and Shah were re­lieved of their du­ties by the EF­CL's new board, led by chair­man Arnold Pig­gott.The five man­agers worked be­low Shah and Ma­haraj.A pre­lim­i­nary re­port had al­so re­vealed that con­tracts worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were giv­en out to se­lect con­trac­tors in the run-up to the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion and they were paid in full with­out any work be­ing done.

Two con­trac­tors, who were fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, had been iden­ti­fied as the ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the scheme.The EF­CL board found the "se­cret room" on the first floor of the Mar­aval build­ing, which is op­po­site the Coun­try Club and al­so hous­es the main branch of First Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Ltd.

More in­fo

The EF­CL is a spe­cial State en­ter­prise formed to build, de­liv­er and main­tain mod­ern build­ing fa­cil­i­ties, util­is­ing best prac­tices in project man­age­ment.Its man­date is to en­sure the de­vel­op­ment of mod­ern and ef­fi­cient phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and sup­port the strate­gic goals of the min­istry.

The com­pa­ny has been crit­i­cised fre­quent­ly over its in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties for sev­er­al schools which re­main in­com­plete, or fail, leav­ing hun­dreds of chil­dren with­out ac­com­mo­da­tion since the new term opened in Sep­tem­ber.

In 2012, then Op­po­si­tion mem­ber, now Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, de­scribed the op­er­a­tions at EF­CL as en­abling a "feed­ing fren­zy."

Im­bert had raised sus­pi­cions of "ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties" in the award of con­tracts by EF­CL and had called for a foren­sic au­dit in­to sev­er­al scopes of works, in­clud­ing elec­tri­cal up­grades at Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment School and Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege.He al­so claimed then that for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Clifton De Coteau, used his po­si­tion to help a friend ben­e­fit from EF­CL con­tracts.