Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to stop the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal project, say­ing there are too many unan­swered ques­tions about the em­bat­tled Cana­di­an con­glom­er­ate, SNC-Lavalin, which is tipped to build the hos­pi­tal.Im­bert, who promised to speak at length on im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, said the Gov­ern­ment must give full dis­clo­sure.He said: "I do not think they should pro­ceed with the project un­der the present arrange­ments in view of the cloud that is hang­ing over SNC-Lavalin.

"Every­body seems to be evad­ing the is­sue. When we look at the is­sue, no one is claim­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this de­ci­sion to en­gage this con­trac­tor."Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T G�rard Lat­ulippe said on Mon­day the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion was do­ing a due-dili­gence re­view on SNC-Lavalin and no de­ci­sion had yet been tak­en for the com­pa­ny to build the hos­pi­tal.

The T&T Guardian re­port­ed last week a sub­sidiary of the com­pa­ny, SNC Lavalin Inc, is un­der a ten-year ban from the World Bank, while for­mer CEO Pierre Duhaime and for­mer con­struc­tion head Ri­adh Ben A�ssa have been charged with fraud, con­spir­a­cy and bribery.Im­bert said the state­ment made by Lat­ulippe was not suf­fi­cient.

"The hos­pi­tal is cost­ing over $1 bil­lion, from what I saw. No­body seems to know what pro­ce­dures were used to se­lect the con­trac­tor. Is it an open ten­der, what were the cri­te­ria and who did back­ground checks on this com­pa­ny?" Im­bert asked.He said the Gov­ern­ment should not pro­ceed with the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment con­tract un­til all the de­tails were in the open.

Asked whether he felt Pe­nal was the ide­al lo­ca­tion for the hos­pi­tal, Im­bert said no."Just as they com­plained of over-con­cen­tra­tion of projects in Port-of-Spain, we have now turned full cir­cle and we now have mega-projects in Pe­nal," Im­bert said.He said ac­cess­ing ar­eas where a mul­ti­tude of mega-projects ex­ist­ed posed se­ri­ous prob­lems for the cit­i­zen­ry and Gov­ern­ment should spread out projects across the coun­try, rather than con­cen­trat­ing on one area.

Pres­i­dent of the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber Lennox Sir­jus­ingh said his group met with the Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion and the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil on Mon­day night to dis­cuss gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments. They were now plan­ning to hold a break­fast meet­ing on Ju­ly 16 at the Cham­ber Build­ing in West­moor­ings.He ex­pressed con­cern that sev­er­al mega-projects were be­ing built by for­eign con­trac­tors.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the project, say­ing the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal was need­ed in the south­ern re­gions as a high lev­el of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases was re­port­ed in the area."It is a very good project and when the Prime Min­is­ter pitched the idea, I was all in sup­port of it," he added.Khan al­so said it would be ac­ces­si­ble be­cause of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion.