Rose­marie Sant

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has as­sured that lo­cal con­trac­tors will get work on the bil­lion-dol­lar ex­ten­sion of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way to Man­zanil­la.

Lo­cal con­trac­tors had com­plained to the T&T Guardian that fol­low­ing a ten­der process, the lone lo­cal con­trac­tor, NA­MAL­CO, and four oth­er com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing the US-based GLF Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny, had been elim­i­nat­ed and on­ly Chi­na Rail­way, which is owned by the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment, had passed the first eval­u­a­tion tech­ni­cal pro­pos­al ten­der stage in or­der to move on to the sec­ond eval­u­a­tion.

Con­trac­tors ex­pressed con­cern that Nid­co would have ac­cept­ed the bid from Chi­na Rail­way with­out "any com­par­i­son and com­pe­ti­tion."

The project, ac­cord­ing to the pub­lished in­vi­ta­tion to bid from Nid­co, was for 14 kilo­me­tres of high­way from Cu­mu­to to To­co.

Yes­ter­day, Sinanan said the first phase was ac­tu­al­ly from Waller­field to Man­zanil­la and the sec­ond phase was from Va­len­cia to To­co.

But he said the "project is far from be­ing start­ed" as the is­sue of land ac­qui­si­tion need­ed to be ad­dressed, "be­cause no project un­der my watch will end up like the Point Fortin High­way where a con­tract was award­ed with­out the land be­ing ac­quired."

He added: "What went on there (Point Fortin project) was a dis­as­ter, The con­trac­tor had to stop and start work be­cause land was be­ing ac­quired in a piece­meal fash­ion.

"I am def­i­nite­ly on the side of lo­cal con­trac­tors. We have to find a way to get all lo­cal con­trac­tors on the job. They em­ploy lo­cals. We have to get their equip­ment back out. There is enough equip­ment in this coun­try. We don't need to bring in any­thing."

Lo­cal con­trac­tors have as­sured they have the ca­pac­i­ty once the project is di­vid­ed in­to small­er pack­ages.

They added: "The en­gage­ment of lo­cal firms will stim­u­late a sec­tor which has been dor­mant for more than a year and by ex­ten­sion stim­u­late the econ­o­my, help deal with the un­em­ploy­ment prob­lem and the high­way may even be com­plet­ed with­in the stip­u­lat­ed 30 months, giv­en that all sec­tions of the high­way will be worked on si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly us­ing 15-20 lo­cal firms."

They are al­so con­cerned that if a for­eign con­trac­tor got the project, "for­eign­ers will get the work and scarce US dol­lars will be repa­tri­at­ed."

Sinanan said he ful­ly un­der­stood what they were say­ing and as­sured, "all their con­cerns are valid and I will look at their con­cerns be­fore any­thing is done."

How­ev­er, he would gave no time frame for the start of the project, say­ing the key ac­qui­si­tion is­sue need­ed to be ad­dressed first.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that of the six bids for the project, on­ly one lo­cal com­pa­ny, NA­MAL­CO, sub­mit­ted a bid. The oth­er firms to ten­der were US-based GLF Con­struc­tion and four Chi­nese com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Chi­na Rail­way and Har­bour Sino­hy­dro.

Of the four com­pa­nies, on­ly Chi­na Rail­way's tech­ni­cal pro­pos­al passed the first eval­u­a­tion to move on to the sec­ond eval­u­a­tion stage.