Derek Achong

Brazil­ian con­struc­tion firm OAS Con­stru­to­ra has been or­dered to pay over $6 mil­lion to a lo­cal sub-con­trac­tor for the Point Fortin High­way.

KJS En­ter­prise Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, of Small Trace, Siparia, yes­ter­day ob­tained a de­fault judg­ment against the firm af­ter it had failed to file a de­fence against the com­pa­ny's law­suit seek­ing to re­cov­er out­stand­ing fees for ser­vices it ren­dered in the con­struc­tion of the La Brea seg­ment of the over $7 bil­lion project, which is still in­com­plete.

Ac­cord­ing to the court or­der, a copy of which has been ob­tained by the T&T Guardian,OAS is re­quired to make the pay­ment forth­with or risk the com­pa­ny com­menc­ing pro­ceed­ings to seize its as­sets to re­coup the funds.

"Warn­ing-If you ig­nore this or­der your goods may be re­moved and sold or oth­er en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings may be tak­en against you. If this hap­pens fur­ther costs may be added," the or­der stat­ed.

The com­pa­ny filed the law­suit in Oc­to­ber last year af­ter it had not been paid since com­plet­ed its ser­vices in two months ear­li­er. Un­der the con­tract be­tween the two par­ties, OAS had agreed to make pay­ments with­in 30 days of the com­pa­ny com­plet­ing the ex­ca­va­tion works.

OAS's woes may be com­pound­ed in the next cou­ple of weeks as the T&T Guardian un­der­stands that an­oth­er lo­cal sub-con­trac­tor Caribbean Weld­ing Sup­plies Lim­it­ed has al­so threat­ened le­gal ac­tion for a lit­tle over $5 mil­lion, which it is owed for the rental of equip­ment to the Brazil­ian firm.

That com­pa­ny served OAS with its pre­ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on De­cem­ber 17, last year, how­ev­er, it has agreed to de­lay fil­ing its case giv­ing OAS an ex­tend­ed dead­line to re­spond, which ex­pires next Thurs­day.

Both com­pa­nies are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Ab­del and Shabaana Mo­hammed, while Steven Singh is rep­re­sent­ing OAS.

OAS is no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy as in late 2014, sev­er­al ex­ec­u­tives the con­struc­tion gi­ant were in­dict­ed by Brazil­ian law en­force­ment agen­cies for of mak­ing bribe pay­ments to politi­cians and com­mit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tive ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in sev­er­al Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries.

Sev­er­al calls were made to OAS's lo­cal of­fices at New­town Cen­tre, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day for a re­sponse to the de­fault judg­ment. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse.

The high­way project is a re­port­ed­ly on­ly a lit­tle over 50 per cent com­plete and has been marred with con­tro­ver­sy since it com­menced in 2011. Con­struc­tion had to be de­layed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions due to protest ac­tion at var­i­ous sites tak­en by the High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM), who op­posed it based on en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and is­sues with the dis­place­ment of res­i­dents, whose land had to ac­quired by the Gov­ern­ment for con­struc­tion.

HRM has ini­ti­at­ed a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion chal­leng­ing Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to con­struct the high­way, which is cur­rent­ly be­fore High Court Judge James Aboud and is yet to go on tri­al.

Short­ly af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice last year, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­vealed that the project was in jeop­ardy his pre­de­ces­sor Lar­ry Howai made no fi­nan­cial arrange­ments were made for works to con­tin­ue be­yond Oc­to­ber. He told Par­lia­ment at Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing ways of find­ing fund­ing to com­plete the project but gave no as­sur­ances as to when it will be done.