Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the T&T Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties to find out whether due-dili­gence pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed when the Cana­di­an en­gi­neer­ing con­glom­er­ate SNC-Lavalin was se­lect­ed to build the planned mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar Pe­nal hos­pi­tal.SNC-Lavalin has been em­broiled in al­le­ga­tions of cor­po­rate cor­rup­tion since last year.De­spite this, SNC-Lavalin has been cho­sen to build the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre.

The T&T Guardian al­so sent an e-mail to T&T's high com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da Philip Buxo, who worked for SNC-Lavalin up to the time of his ap­point­ment to the diplo­mat­ic post in 2010.His bi­og­ra­phy on the of­fi­cial Web site at http://ttcg­toron­to.gov.tt/in­dex.php/our-coun­try/bi­ogra­phies/95-high-com­mis­sion­er1 says for four years he was di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny's Cari­com Re­gion En­er­gy and In­fra­struc­ture Di­vi­sion.

No re­sponse was forth­com­ing from Buxo.Lau­rent Morel-�-l'Huissier, po­lit­i­cal coun­sel­lor at the High Com­mis­sion of Cana­da in Port-of-Spain, said he would is­sue a state­ment in due course.The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) is su­per­vis­ing the con­struc­tion of the hos­pi­tal, which is sched­uled for con­struc­tion at Clarke Road, Pe­nal, un­der a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties.

Mooni­lal, un­der whose port­fo­lio Ude­cott falls, said he was con­cerned about the al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing the com­pa­ny, but the se­lec­tion and ten­der­ing were be­ing han­dled by the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. He said Ude­cott has writ­ten to the Cana­di­an mis­sion about the mat­ter."These mat­ters are dealt with by the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, where they do their own pro­ce­dures in se­lect­ing a com­pa­ny for de­sign, project man­age­ment and con­struc­tion," Mooni­lal said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that in a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment, the host gov­ern­ment does not se­lect the con­trac­tors.Asked whether gov­ern­ment planned to ve­to the Cana­di­an's de­ci­sion to give SNC-Lavalin the con­tract now that the gov­ern­ment has been made aware of the cloud over SNC, Mooni­lal said he could not an­swer at this point."We are mak­ing some in­ves­ti­ga­tions by try­ing to find out whether due dili­gence was fol­lowed," he said.

"There is no sealed deal. We are work­ing through the em­bassy in Toron­to to en­quire whether they have done due dili­gence and then we will take it from there."Mooni­lal said the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment was known for its trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance."As such we will en­quire af­ter they have done their in­ves­ti­ga­tions," he said.

"SNC-Lavalin is no stranger to T&T, be­cause un­der the PNM it was hired to do projects. We can­not make a judge­ment, its a sub­sidiary of the com­pa­ny that was banned. We want to be as­sured that prop­er pro­to­col was fol­lowed. We must al­so re­mem­ber that these are mat­ters of for­eign re­la­tions so it is sen­si­tive so we have to be cau­tious," Mooni­lal said.

But pres­i­dent of the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber Lennox Sir­jus­ingh ques­tioned why the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to choose the con­trac­tor for the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre.He said: "How is this de­cid­ed? It is not ben­e­fi­cial to de­vel­op­ing lo­cal con­tent in the host coun­try." Sir­jus­ingh ex­pressed dis­gust that the T&T Gov­ern­ment would de­prive lo­cals of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit by giv­ing the Cana­di­ans per­mis­sion to choose one of their own con­trac­tors.

He said: "This is a loan that we are tak­ing from the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment. We have to pay it back. It is not a grant, so why should they choose the con­trac­tor?"Sir­jus­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment had an oblig­a­tion to de­vel­op its own peo­ple, yet for­eign con­trac­tors were be­ing giv­en the job to build mega projects in T&T.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal said be­cause it is a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment, T&T gets low in­ter­est rates and oth­er pref­er­en­tial con­di­tions."We don't have do­mes­tic re­sources to sus­tain mega projects so gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment arrange­ments are made," Mooni­lal ex­plained. Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try Afra Ray­mond said his group had voiced strong ob­jec­tions over gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments.

"Our gov­ern­ment in no cir­cum­stances should not be award­ing con­tracts to com­pa­nies which have been banned by the World Bank, be­cause that means that we are fail­ing to main­tain prop­er stan­dards in how we han­dle pub­lic mon­ey," Ray­mond said.He added that a vast amount of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars were be­ing com­mit­ted to con­tracts and con­trac­tors who were not op­er­at­ing in the in­ter­est of the coun­try.

Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was de­vel­op­ing "rea­son­able sus­pi­cion of im­prop­er prac­tices," Ray­mond said there was a need to re­view all gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments, es­pe­cial­ly since they did not serve T&T's eco­nom­ic in­ter­est.He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to halt the present ini­tia­tives so as to have a broad-based con­sul­ta­tion amongst stake­hold­ers to es­tab­lish a prop­er pol­i­cy on gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments, as well as the use of for­eign con­trac­tors and con­sul­tants.