Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The fall in glob­al en­er­gy prices in 2016, cou­pled with a steady re­duc­tion of crude oil pro­duc­tion, have con­tributed to a sharp de­cline in Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue.

With lit­tle mon­ey in it's cof­fers, sev­er­al mega-projects which start­ed un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing con­struc­tion of over a dozen pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, all re­main in­com­plete.

Giv­en that the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains the life­line of the T&T econ­o­my, its no sur­prise that the on­ly mega-con­struc­tion project which re­mains on stream is the $6.3 bil­lion Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Ltd (CG­CL) plant in La Brea.

Some of the mega-projects which re­main in­com­plete:

SOLOMON HO­CHOY HIGH­WAY EX­TEN­SION PROJECT

The $7.4 bil­lion Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion project start­ed in March 2011 and is 49 per cent com­plete. De­signed to con­nect the city of San Fer­nan­do at Gol­con­da to the south­ern towns of Debe, Pe­nal, Siparia, Fyz­abad, La Brea and Point Fortin, the high­way was ini­tial­ly award­ed to Brazil­ian con­struc­tion gi­ant Con­stru­to­ra OAS but was nev­er com­plet­ed af­ter the com­pa­ny went bank­rupt.

In Jan­u­ary, 1,000 OAS work­ers were laid off with­out be­ing paid out­stand­ing wages and sev­er­ance pay­ments.

In Feb­ru­ary, 60 plus con­trac­tors hired by OAS protest­ed out­side the com­pa­ny's head­quar­ters in Gol­con­da, say­ing they were owed in ex­cess of US$40 mil­lion.

On May 25, the con­tract came to an end and an­gry work­ers threat­ened to burn down OAS prop­er­ty if they were not paid.

By Sep­tem­ber, NID­CO, the project man­ag­er, in­vit­ed ten­ders to re­sume the high­way and sev­er­al pri­vate con­trac­tors took OAS to court de­mand­ing their out­stand­ing pay­ments.

The com­pa­ny's as­sets in­clud­ing ve­hi­cles and con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al were auc­tioned off in No­vem­ber.

CHIL­DREN'S HOS­PI­TAL

Sit­u­at­ed on a 60-acre ex­panse of Ca­roni lands, $1 bil­lion the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal and Train­ing Cen­tre re­mains un­oc­cu­pied.

Meant to be the hub of med­ical tourism in the Caribbean, the fa­cil­i­ty is now over­grown with weeds. In Au­gust, the fa­cil­i­ty was hand­ed over by Chi­nese firm Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group to UDe­COTT. Fol­low­ing a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty, UDe­COTT chair­man Noel Gar­cia said a Re­quest For Pro­pos­als (RFP) was is­sued so the hos­pi­tal can open its doors through a pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship. A bio-med­ical en­gi­neer was giv­en the task to en­sure that all equip­ment were pro­tect­ed and func­tion­ing. An in­ven­to­ry was cre­at­ed and each item was tagged. Se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were al­so put in­to place to en­sure there was no unau­tho­rised re­moval of the equip­ment.

THE BEETHAM WASTE WA­TER TREAT­MENT PLANT

The Beetham Waste Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant is 60 per cent com­plete. Rigged with con­tro­ver­sy, the plant has been the sub­ject of scruti­ny by the Gov­ern­ment. In May, a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing of Par­lia­ment con­duct­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and was in­formed that a to­tal of $943.7 mil­lion had been ex­pend­ed on the Beetham Waste Wa­ter Treat­ment project for 2015. NGC en­tered the con­tract with Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) Ltd in March 10, 2014, at a cost of US$162,055,318.77 to build the plant but in No­vem­ber 2015, the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed. SIS in­di­cat­ed that it could not com­plete the works even though it was paid over $780 mil­lion.

UNI­VER­SI­TY OF THE WEST IN­DIES SOUTH CAM­PUS (PE­NAL/DEBE)

Build­ing works at the $.5 bil­lion Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies south cam­pus in Debe is 80 per cent com­plete. Since the con­struc­tion be­gan in Sep­tem­ber 2013, a to­tal of $511 mil­lion has been spent on the project. Out­fit­ting of all build­ings, ex­ter­nal fix­tures and ex­ter­nal works are 50 per cent com­plete. The cam­pus was sup­posed to be ready for the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2015/2016. How­ev­er, UWI prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland said there were prob­lems with the con­trac­tor, Chi­na Jaing­su In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Tech­ni­cal Corp, which he did not wish to dis­close. The project is now ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by year's end.

POINT FORTIN HOS­PI­TAL

Nine­teen months af­ter the sod was turned by for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the con­struc­tion of the $1.2 bil­lion Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal has fi­nal­ly start­ed. It was a project promised since the days of the late Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams.

It is be­ing fund­ed through a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with Aus­tria and the main con­trac­tor is an Aus­tri­an firm Vamed En­gi­neer­ing GmbH & CO KG. The hos­pi­tal is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Au­gust 2017.

ARI­MA HOS­PI­TAL

Ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in June 2018, con­struc­tion of the $1.2 bil­lion Ari­ma hos­pi­tal start­ed in June this year and is about 20 per cent com­plete. Ari­ma MP An­tho­ny Gar­cia said the site is bar­ri­cad­ed and he was ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing the open­ing of the promised in­sti­tu­tion.

PE­NAL FIRE STA­TION

Con­struc­tion on the $71 mil­lion Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion is un­der way and ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Au­gust 30, next year. The project is 35 per cent com­plete, ac­cord­ing to Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton-Whyms, me­dia co­or­di­na­tor of UDe­COTT.Work be­gan un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment one month be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

SHI­VA BOYS' & PAR­VATI GIRLS' HIN­DU COL­LEGES (PE­NAL)

Both schools sit­u­at­ed at Clarke Road, Pe­nal are 70 per cent com­plete. How­ev­er, be­cause of a non-pay­ment of funds, the con­trac­tor has stopped works.

In an in­ter­view, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said a num­ber of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools are still in­com­plete be­cause of lack of fund­ing.