Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is de­mand­ing an­swers from the Gov­ern­ment on SNC-Lavalin's in­volve­ment with the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal con­tract af­ter the dis­clo­sure that T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da, Phillip Buxo, once worked for the con­tro­ver­sial Cana­di­an firm.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment ses­sion, PNM MP Colm Im­bert read in­for­ma­tion on Buxo's for­mer in­volve­ment with SNC-Lavalin which was re­port­ed on­line in March 2011. In sev­er­al sto­ries over the past week, the T&T Guardian has al­so re­port­ed Buxo's pre­vi­ous pos­tion and ques­tions hang­ing over the com­pa­ny.SNC-Lavalin, which has been se­lect­ed for con­struc­tion of the $800 mil­lion hos­pi­tal, has come un­der scruti­ny and con­cern where its rep­u­ta­tion is in­volved.

The hos­pi­tal con­tract award­ed to the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny was one of sev­er­al pro­cure­ment is­sues Im­bert raised in pi­lot­ing a mo­tion which ex­pressed dis­ap­proval at the Gov­ern­ment's "poor gov­er­nance and poor pro­cure­ment" for state agen­cies.

De­scrib­ing the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal is­sue as a "brew­ing scan­dal," Im­bert called on the Gov­ern­ment to clear the air, since he not­ed the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion and the su­per­vis­ing agency, Ude­cott, had point­ed fin­gers at each oth­er over the com­pa­ny's in­volve­ment.

"We need a de­fin­i­tive state­ment on this scan­dal," he said.Im­bert not­ed SNC-Lavalin was banned from projects in April by both the World Bank and the Cana­di­an In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Agency (CI­DA) over al­leged bribery and com­pa­ny mis­con­duct.

"Yet, some­how, Gov­ern­ment didn't know SNC-Lavalin was banned by the World Bank and CI­DA. What are they do­ing in T&T? We're en­ter­ing a $1 bil­lion-dol­lar con­tract with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey and giv­ing it to a com­pa­ny banned by these two agen­cies for bribery and cor­rup­tion. Doesn't Gov­ern­ment mon­i­tor any­thing?" Im­bert asked.A se­nior SNC-Lavalin of­fi­cial was al­so re­port­ed in a Cana­di­an news sto­ry to have said the com­pa­ny used the code let­ters "PCC" and "CC" for bribery and to de­note hid­den con­sul­tan­cy costs.

Ques­tion­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials' po­si­tion that the State had no con­trol over se­lec­tion and ten­der for the hos­pi­tal con­tract, Im­bert read out in­for­ma­tion about Buxo, who was de­scribed as a south­ern for­mer oil-rig work­er who went on to own a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar lo­gis­tics busi­ness.A Jy­oti Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ar­ti­cle said, "It's al­so one of the rea­sons SNC-Lavalin made him a di­rec­tor, and why he has be­come his coun­try's High Com­mis­sion­er to Ot­tawa at age 40."

The ar­ti­cle said Buxo moved to Cana­da in 2006 and "Even­tu­al­ly SNC-Lavalin came knock­ing, of­fer­ing to make him di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny's Cari­com en­er­gy and in­fra­struc­ture di­vi­sion."Buxo said this ex­pe­ri­ence would be in­valu­able in his new role as high com­mis­sion­er and he would like to see Cana­di­an com­pa­nies "get back in­to the game" in T&T.

CNC3 News

The ar­ti­cle al­so said, "Ei­ther way, Mr Buxo says his coun­try is strong­ly in favour of a deal. That's part of a chain of ac­tiv­i­ties that need to take place, he says. But per­haps more im­por­tant­ly, Mr Buxo plans to go di­rect­ly to Cana­di­an busi­ness­es them­selves, to high­light the po­ten­tial his coun­try has and why they should en­cour­age the gov­ern­ment to make it a pri­or­i­ty."

Buxo was quot­ed as say­ing, "We in T&T and Cari­com need to go to your pri­vate sec­tor–the SNC-Lavalins and the Sun­cors and the rest of your heavy­weights, the blue chips–and be able to mar­ket a good sto­ry. Those are the guys who need to go to your min­is­ters."Im­bert took is­sue with Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan's dis­tanc­ing him­self from the SNCL con­tro­ver­sy, say­ing the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty–to which Khan had re­ferred queries from the T&T Guardian–re­port­ed to Khan.

Im­bert al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to say how the cost of the chil­dren's hos­pi­tal at Cou­va rose from $975 mil­ion in ear­ly June, when the sod was turned, to $1.5 bil­lion three weeks lat­er when Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan gave this fig­ure in the Sen­ate on Tues­day.Im­bert ques­tioned a $464 mil­lion sum for con­sul­tan­cy fees.

He took is­sue with for­mer Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty deputy chair­man Kurt Ajod­ha–who re­signed re­cent­ly over ques­tion­able of cre­den­tials–say­ing Ad­jod­ha had al­so been ad­vis­er to the Trans­port Min­istry.Im­bert said Ajod­ha had writ­ten to the min­istry's Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in Oc­to­ber 2012 about work to be done at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex and the let­ter list­ed many cre­den­tials for Ad­jod­ha but it was sub­se­quent­ly found he had none of them.

Deem­ing Ajod­ha a fraud, Im­bert said, "Is it gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to hire peo­ple with bo­gus qual­i­fi­ca­tions and al­low them to deal with a $232 mil­lion con­tract where the high­est bid­der gets the job?"