SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark wants Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to stop “danc­ing around” the re­fur­bish­ment cost of the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence in Blenheim To­ba­go, stat­ing he must come clean on the is­sue.

Mark raised the mat­ter at yes­ter­day’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence, stat­ing that the PM needs to ac­count for the fi­nal fig­ures spent.

He said the fig­ure for the res­i­dence jumped from $17.5 mil­lion to an ad­di­tion­al $42 mil­lion which to­talled al­most “$60 mil­lion” of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars be­ing spent on one build­ing while cit­i­zens were suf­fer­ing for prop­er roads, crime was out of con­trol, mur­ders hit­ting the roof and the coun­try was sink­ing in flood­wa­ters.

In No­vem­ber 2019, Mark said, the PM in a dai­ly news­pa­per was quot­ed as say­ing that the cost to re­fur­bish the res­i­dence was $17.5 mil­lion.

This fig­ure was al­so con­firmed by Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia.

Ude­cott was the ex­e­cut­ing agency for the re­fur­bish­ment work.

Last week, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal spoke about the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial To­ba­go res­i­dence hav­ing a $38 mil­lion cost over­run in re­fur­bish­ment.

The PM, how­ev­er, dis­missed Mooni­lal’s claims.

Row­ley said he had no idea where Mooni­lal “plucked” these fig­ures from and had asked Ude­cott to pro­vide him with de­tails of the cost of the res­i­dence which had been left to rot un­der the UNC tenure.

A Ude­cott doc­u­ment re­vealed that the con­struc­tion of the res­i­dence had a bud­get of $22 mil­lion and that ad­di­tion­al re­quire­ments, name­ly se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, were iden­ti­fied and re­sult­ed in a vari­a­tion in the sum of $8.1 mil­lion.

It said Ude­cott en­gaged an in­de­pen­dent quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or to as­sess fur­ther works which were then val­ued at $8.6 mil­lion. As a re­sult of the vari­ance, the con­struc­tion cost was re­vised to $37.1 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, Mark said the UNC had in its pos­ses­sion of­fi­cial doc­u­ments stamped from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the cost in­volved which were sent to the Par­lia­ment.

“And the sum, that we are told, that is paid, thus far for the con­struc­tion for the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence is $48,736,920.56.”

Round­ing off this fig­ure to $49 mil­lion, Mark said, “I don’t know if in his of­fice they are pro­vid­ing oth­er in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic. There may ap­pear to be some con­fu­sion oth­er­wise…but as far as we are con­cerned there is no con­fu­sion.”

Mark asked “that $42 mil­lion in cost over­run, where the mon­ey gone Prime Min­is­ter? You need to ex­plain to the peo­ple of our coun­try who are suf­fer­ing from crim­i­nal ne­glect where the mon­ey gone?”

In 2018, Mark said, the PM took Ude­cott un­der his of­fice, stat­ing that the bulk of the res­i­dence took place in 2019.

“This is se­ri­ous. We want ac­count­abil­i­ty. We need an­swers Mr Prime Min­is­ter be­fore we take it fur­ther.”

He ques­tioned who con­struct­ed the res­i­dence.

“Who are the con­trac­tors for it to shoot from $17.5 mil­lion to $60 mil­lion?”

He said one of the sub­con­trac­tors re­ceived $5 mil­lion to pave a road lead­ing to this par­tic­u­lar res­i­dence which is in the “Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port. This is the most ex­pen­sive road in To­ba­go.”

While the res­i­dence was be­ing con­struct­ed, Mark said, work was go­ing apace on five new apart­ments on an­oth­er prop­er­ty in Lan­date To­ba­go known as For­est Hills.

“Is it co­in­ci­den­tal? Is it ac­ci­den­tal? We need a crim­i­nal foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter. Is this Lan­date two? That is what peo­ple are ask­ing me.”

Hold­ing a cadas­tral map of For­est Hills, Mark said there are 20 lots on the prop­er­ty that be­long to promi­nent peo­ple some of whom are linked to the PNM and work in State en­ter­pris­es.

One lot, Mark said, be­longs to the wife of a Gov­ern­ment politi­cian.

“I have the names of every one of you who own lots. And who ex­act­ly con­struct­ed these apart­ments? That is what the peo­ple are ask­ing. They want clar­i­fi­ca­tion.”

Mark said he hoped that Row­ley would not con­tin­ue his ball­room danc­ing on is­sues in­volv­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and clear the air on the mat­ter.

“Don’t give us no ball­room dance here.”