Renu­ka Singh

A pri­vate lab re­tained by Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SISL) to con­duct and ap­prove wa­ter and soil test­ing on the bil­lion-dol­lar Beetham Waste­water Re­cy­cling Project has close links to SIS.

The Sun­day Guardian re­ceived copies of the lab work which shows that one com­pa­ny–Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tants Ltd–was con­duct­ing the req­ui­site test­ing on the project for SISL.

But this is in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the FIDIC (Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tionale des In­ge­nieurs Con­seils/In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Con­sult­ing En­gi­neers) con­tract rules drawn up be­tween SISL and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), which state that "an in­de­pen­dent test­ing agency" must car­ry out the in­spec­tion and test­ing as the $1.4 bil­lion project gets off the ground. The con­tract al­so stip­u­lates that if the con­trac­tor (SISL) fails to car­ry out the test­ing, it falls to the client (NGC) to pay for the req­ui­site in­de­pen­dent test­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments sourced by the Sun­day Guardian, Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tants was reg­is­tered back in 2007 by Cindy Seecha­ran, who gave her ad­dress as 23 Rivulet Road, Cou­va. Seecha­ran has been as­so­ci­at­ed with SISL in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties, in­clud­ing op­er­a­tions man­ag­er and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary. SISL head of­fice and sev­er­al of its sub­sidiaries car­ry the same ad­dress in Cou­va as the one stat­ed by Seecha­ran. The tele­phone num­ber list­ed on the reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments al­so be­longs to SISL.

Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ries and Con­sul­tants Ltd, how­ev­er, is not list­ed among the com­pa­nies owned by the SIS group on its of­fi­cial web­site. Ac­cord­ing to the reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments, Seecha­ran reg­is­tered the com­pa­ny and list­ed two peo­ple as di­rec­tors, Gu­la­bc­hand Ma­haraj and Ro­hit Ramkhelawan. Ma­haraj's name re­mained list­ed as a di­rec­tor at Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tants Ltd up un­til the last an­nu­al re­turn filed with the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 17, 2014. By 2015, Ma­haraj's name ap­peared on in­ter­nal SISL doc­u­ments as the com­mer­cial con­sul­tant on the BWRP, in­clud­ing two re­quest doc­u­ments for pay­ments be­tween SISL and NGC.

On Au­gust 2007, four days af­ter its reg­is­tra­tion, Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tants Ltd had filed a change of ad­dress mov­ing its of­fices to LP 3 Fraz­er Lane, St Joseph. One year lat­er, in Au­gust 2008, the lab sold the ma­jor­i­ty of its 1,000 shares (which is 600) to a sin­gle com­pa­ny, Lin­coln Hold­ings, which car­ries the same 23 Rivulet Road, Cou­va, ad­dress as SISL.

There is very lit­tle in­for­ma­tion avail­able on Lin­coln Hold­ings oth­er than the shared ad­dress with SISL.

Two years af­ter that, by Au­gust 30, 2010, Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tant Ltd changed its ad­dress again to 50 3rd Av­enue, Isaac De­vel­op­ment, Cou­va. It is from this ad­dress that the test­ing on the wa­ter and soil as­so­ci­at­ed with the BWRP took place.

Re­sult sheets

The Sun­day Guardian ob­tained the re­sult sheets for three den­si­ty tests car­ried out in Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber, 2014. Two of them were signed off by lab ad­min­is­tra­tor Ivana Ram­saran, while the third was signed by lab ad­min­is­tra­tor Ren­isha Humphrey. The Sun­day Guardian at­tempt­ed to con­tact both women on the two cell­phone con­tacts list­ed on the lab­o­ra­to­ry let­ter­head, as there was no land­line list­ed.

A man an­swered one of the num­bers and said that Ram­saran no longer worked for the lab. The Sun­day Guardian was able to con­tact Humphrey through the Sevil­la Con­sul­tants Ltd, an­oth­er un­reg­is­tered lab test­ing fa­cil­i­ty. Search­es at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs com­pa­ny reg­istry de­part­ment showed no com­pa­ny list­ed by that name.

In a brief in­ter­view, Humphrey con­firmed that she worked for Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tants but re­fused to com­ment fur­ther on the lab.

"I sug­gest you talk to some­one else," she said.

When asked who was in charge of the lab or who the Sun­day Guardian should di­rect its ques­tions to, Humphrey said "I don't know" and quick­ly dis­con­nect­ed the call.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian and from Ram­saran's LinkedIn pro­file, she at­tend­ed the Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School from 2005-2010 be­fore at­tend­ing the Up­per Lev­el In­sti­tute to study "com­put­ers." Ram­saran list­ed her oc­cu­pa­tion as "sec­re­tary at the Cou­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion" from May 2011 to present. The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed that cor­po­ra­tion but was told that there was no one there by that name; the news­pa­per then at­tempt­ed to make con­tact with Ram­saran on Face­book and LinkedIn with­out suc­cess.

Two of the three lab re­ports for­ward­ed to SISL was signed by Ram­saran in Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber 2014.

Humphrey, mean­while, list­ed her cur­rent oc­cu­pa­tion as a lab ad­min­is­tra­tor at­tached to SISL from April 2014 to present.

This would mean that one of two peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for au­tho­ris­ing the con­trac­tu­al­ly ob­lig­at­ed soil and wa­ter test­ing at a bil­lion-dol­lar waste wa­ter re­cy­cling plant was four years out of high school.

The high­ly sci­en­tif­ic test­ing in­clud­ed three den­si­ty tests on the red sand, red and grey clay and the lime­stone crush­er at­tached to the de­sign, build, op­er­a­tions and main­te­nance of the Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Plant, to­geth­er with the as­so­ci­at­ed pipelines and wa­ter stor­age facil­ties, in­clud­ing field tests re­sults. How­ev­er, the con­tract calls specif­i­cal­ly for the test­ing to be car­ried out by "suit­ably qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced staff."

Sant: Wa­ter qual­i­ty meet­ing stan­dards

Con­tact­ed about the qual­i­ty of the out­put at the project, NGC com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Roger Sant said on Ju­ly 21 that the "qual­i­ty of the wa­ter is meet­ing the re­quire­ments of the con­tract."

How­ev­er, when asked the name of the com­pa­ny con­tract­ed to pro­vide that test in­for­ma­tion, Sant seemed to change his tune on Ju­ly 24. "There is no com­pa­ny con­tract­ed to do the wa­ter test­ing at the Beetham Waste­water project. The test­ing will be done by NGC as the sell­er and by WASA as the buy­er," he said.

Civ­il Lab­o­ra­to­ry & Con­sul­tants

Ltd has con­duct­ed three den­si­ty and wa­ter con­tent test­ing for the project ac­cord­ing to test sheets ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

It's a se­vere con­flict of in­ter­est–Joseph

In­dus­try heavy­weight T&T Con­trac­tors' As­so­ci­a­tion di­rec­tor and for­mer pres­i­dent Mick­ey Joseph spoke out against the lack of in­de­pen­dence in the way the test­ing is be­ing car­ried out.

"Of course, there is se­vere con­flict of in­ter­est," Joseph said in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.

Joseph said the con­flict arose specif­i­cal­ly in this case be­cause qual­i­ty as­sur­ance is an im­por­tant com­po­nent of this project.

He said even if the tests were up to stan­dard, there was the per­cep­tion of con­flict that im­me­di­ate­ly paint­ed the re­sults as con­flict­ed.

"I am not aware of this hap­pen­ing with any oth­er project ever," he said.

SIS silent

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact SIS through its list­ed tele­phone num­bers were un­suc­cess­ful. The Sun­day Guardian at­tempt­ed to con­tact SISL chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer David Lums­den but was rout­ed through­out the com­pa­ny when the call was trans­ferred sev­er­al times.

One per­son, who re­fused to be named, al­so gave a sec­ond of­fice num­ber to con­tact Lums­den, but when the Sun­day Guardian called that num­ber se­cu­ri­ty di­rect­ed all calls to the first of­fice num­ber again.