Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Max­ie Cuffie said the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment spent $331 mil­lion on a Mi­crosoft soft­ware agree­ment that could not be used and for which they were be­ing charged.

He said this was a waste of mon­ey and mis­man­age­ment on the part of the pub­lic ser­vice.

Cuffie made the dis­clo­sure while de­liv­er­ing his bud­get de­bate con­tri­bu­tion on Thurs­day night in Par­lia­ment.

Un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, Cuffie said, a three-year soft­ware agree­ment cost­ing tax­pay­ers US$52.4 mil­lion (TT$331,564, 596.56 mil­lion) was signed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Mi­crosoft Cor­po­ra­tion, which gov­erned the use of the soft­ware in T&T.

"That $331.6 mil­lion rep­re­sent­ed much soft­ware we could not use and were be­ing charged for...and some we were us­ing al­though we had not paid for it and were there­fore pe­nalised," Cuffie said.

Cuffie said much of the "$331.6 mil­lion rep­re­sent­ed waste and mis­man­age­ment" on the "part of our lo­cal pub­lic ser­vice of­fi­cials."

Over the last four weeks, Cuffie said, a team from his min­istry had been in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Mi­crosoft.

"I am pleased to an­nounce that we have reached con­sen­sus on a new agree­ment, sub­ject to Cab­i­net ap­proval, that will cost US$4.24 mil­lion a year amount­ing to just over US$12 mil­lion in three years."

Cuffie said this new agree­ment will save T&T$272 mil­lion in pay­ments to Mi­crosoft in the next 36 months.

He al­so spoke about the Op­po­si­tion not sup­port­ing the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) in the last two weeks, which will have im­pli­ca­tions for our coun­try's com­pet­i­tive­ness and abil­i­ty to at­tract in­vest­ments.

In a bid to move Gov­ern­ment of­fices out of rental ac­com­mo­da­tions, Cuffie said his min­istry re­turned the keys to a build­ing which was be­ing rent­ed at over $1 mil­lion a month for three years for the Per­son­nel De­part­ment, al­though it was nev­er oc­cu­pied.

"One mil­lion dol­lars a month for an emp­ty build­ing. We al­so took up oc­cu­pa­tion of One Alexan­dra Place (Tra­garete Road, St Clair) which had not been oc­cu­pied for six years and was in­cur­ring rent of $600,000 a month, a fig­ure ne­go­ti­at­ed by mem­bers op­po­site, al­though they nev­er oc­cu­pied the build­ing. We have saved the tax­pay­ers mon­ey and are now in oc­cu­pa­tion of the build­ing un­der the terms that had been ne­go­ti­at­ed pre­vi­ous­ly."

Cuffie said al­though the Gov­ern­ment had been pay­ing rent for sev­er­al un­oc­cu­pied premis­es over the years, they had giv­en up more than 20 leas­es.

"In 2016 we have been able to re­duce rents paid for un­oc­cu­pied build­ings from $3.3 mil­lion to $1.7 mil­lion a month. And we are mov­ing, as swift­ly as is al­lowed, to elim­i­nate all rental ex­pen­di­ture on un­oc­cu­pied prop­er­ties."