There are al­le­ga­tions that the new Nu­trim­ix Hatch­ery was grant­ed a $500,000 dis­count for wa­ter­works by the al­ready cash-strapped Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments com­piled and sent to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion by for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, ques­tions are be­ing asked about why this mas­sive dis­count was giv­en to Nu­trim­ix di­rec­tor Shameer Ron­nie Mo­hammed, who is al­so the chair­man of two State agen­cies, Caribbean Air­lines and the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD).

In Au­gust, Gov­ern­ment gave land at Rivulet Road, Cou­va for Nu­trim­ix to con­struct its $30 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley turned the sod to start con­struc­tion and praised Mo­hammed for work­ing to­wards di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my and boost­ing lo­cal em­ploy­ment.

Copies of the doc­u­ments sent to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­cludes a let­ter from WASA’s act­ing di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions which stat­ed that the de­ci­sion to waive the $500,000 pay­ment came from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and the WASA chair­man.

“The Au­thor­i­ty is guid­ed by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties through the Chair­man of the Board to con­duct work with Nu­trim­ix Hatch­ery De­vel­op­ment in a Pub­lic/Pri­vate ini­tia­tive to com­plete the de­vel­op­ment works re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate a wa­ter ser­vice con­nec­tion to Nu­trim­ix Hatch­ery De­vel­op­ment,” the let­ter stat­ed, adding that WASA re­tains “full own­er­ship” of the works.

The ini­tial quote from WASA pegged the work at $530,114.40. The job was clas­si­fied as “in­ter­con­nec­tion and mains lay­ing” of a 16”x 4” in­ter­con­nec­tion with 487m of a four-inch pipe.

The job in­clud­ed site vis­its and over­heads, mark­ing and cut­ting, in­ter­con­nec­tion, ser­vice con­nec­tion, in­stal­la­tion of an air valve and road restora­tion.

For­mer min­is­ter of wa­ter re­sources Gan­ga Singh, the MP for Ch­agua­nas West, said he had nev­er heard of such a dis­count dur­ing his time at WASA. Cur­rent WASA chair­man Rom­ney Thomas said on Wednes­day that he was not aware of the spe­cial dis­count giv­en to Nu­trim­ix and promised to check on it.

In a text re­sponse to ques­tions on Thurs­day, Thomas de­scribed the ac­cu­sa­tions by Ma­haraj as “in­ac­cu­rate”.

“The Au­thor­i­ty and the com­pa­ny shared the cost of the works which is not un­usu­al in a sit­u­a­tion where the pipeline in­fra­struc­ture will al­so be able to ben­e­fit from sur­round­ing ar­eas,” Thomas said.

He said that notwith­stand­ing the “con­tri­bu­tion made by the com­pa­ny”, the pipeline re­mains the prop­er­ty of WASA.

“The cus­tomer pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant re­sources to­wards these works and still has to pay for its per­ma­nent con­nec­tion which has not yet been made,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Mo­hammed said he made a “con­tri­bu­tion” to the cap­i­tal but re­fused to say how much. He al­so promised to pro­vide doc­u­ments to sup­port his claim but said he was un­avail­able un­til next week.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte re­fut­ed Ma­haraj’s claims, de­scrib­ing them as “er­ro­neous, mis­lead­ing and base­less”.

“The po­si­tion is be­ing tak­en by Mr Ma­haraj in an at­tempt to raise is­sues where they (sic) are none and di­vert the coun­try from $29 bil­lion waste of cash by the UNC,” he said. “WASA stands ready to an­swer any ques­tions posed to them by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.”