KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny lim­it­ed (Nid­co) pres­i­dent Dr Car­son Charles yes­ter­day con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for claim­ing monies are still owed to in­ter­na­tion­al con­trac­tor Con­struc­to­ra OAS for its role in the con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin High­way ex­ten­sion and that a clause was re­moved from their con­tract.

He made the com­ment dur­ing de­bate on the 2024 Bud­get in the Sen­ate, in an ap­par­ent re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's claims at the open­ing of the Archibald De Leon High­way, an ex­ten­sion of the Solomon Ho­choy high­way to Point Fortin, which was start­ed by OAS be­fore it for­feit­ed the con­tract af­ter the Brazil­ian com­pa­ny filed for bank­rupt­cy and then left T&T.

Dr Row­ley had said the state may still have to pay over a bil­lion dol­lars to the for­mer con­trac­tor due to a clause that was re­moved from the con­tract dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the high­way on Oc­to­ber 15, Row­ley said, “If one day some judge drinks a babash and de­cides to rule in OAS’ favour in this mat­ter, against all that I have told you here, it would mean you, your chil­dren, your grand­chil­dren and your great-great-grand­child will have to find over $1 bil­lion to pay OAS on­ly be­cause a clause was tak­en out of the con­tract.”

Fill­ing in as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor for Dami­an Ly­der yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Charles, who was Nid­co pres­i­dent dur­ing the start of the project, de­nied that OAS is still owed over a bil­lion dol­lars.

Charles said, “You (Govt) know full well no clause was re­moved from the con­tract. Ad­den­dum did not re­move any clause. I've said it over and over what hap­pened. No clause was re­moved. No claus­es were ac­tu­al­ly re­moved. What hap­pened was, there were con­se­quences to en­ter­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions and to de­cid­ing that you’re go­ing to con­tin­ue with the works. There are ob­vi­ous con­se­quences to that, so it’s not a sim­ple mat­ter of re­mov­ing a clause.”

He added, “Stop say­ing that we over­pay. We paid ex­act­ly for the work that was done. OAS is not any com­pa­ny that we were all in love with be­cause we have no idea who they are, how they got here.

“At no time was OAS over­paid. Why you keep on say­ing that they were over­paid $5 bil­lion and the job on­ly reach half when that is not true, when the to­tal amount of mon­ey ever re­ceived on the job was $5.1 bil­lion. Half a bil­lion gone for ac­qui­si­tion... How could OAS get that when that's all the mon­ey that was re­ceived. Why are you mak­ing these things up?”

Charles said up un­til 2015, he was able to over­see 61 per cent of the high­way's com­ple­tion and on­ly the best con­sul­tants were hired to work on the mam­moth project.

As a re­sult of this, he knocked Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan for tak­ing all the praise for the project when the ma­jor­i­ty of the work was done un­der the PP gov­ern­ment. He said Sinanan was prais­ing him­self for putting in the doors and win­dows in a house built from foun­da­tion up by some­one else.

Ad­mit­ting, how­ev­er, that Nid­co did not do every­thing right when it came to work­ing along­side OAS, Charles said he found un­der­tak­ing to com­plete such a large project with­in four years was am­bi­tious.

He al­so stressed that there were con­se­quences for the way in which some­one de­cides to ter­mi­nate a con­tract.

He said, “I’m not say­ing what we did was per­fect. We were faced with a unique sit­u­a­tion. The first ever in this coun­try to man­age a project of this mag­ni­tude in four years… There are ways to ter­mi­nate a con­tract. If you ter­mi­nate the con­tract by first starv­ing the con­trac­tor of mon­ey and af­ter he ain’t get no mon­ey and he can’t work, you could get to ter­mi­nate for non-per­for­mance, then you could prob­a­bly es­ti­mate what could hap­pen af­ter that. I don’t have to say what could hap­pen af­ter that," Charles said.

"But I could tell you, I was there un­til De­cem­ber 2015, and we did not get a red cent from no ad­min­is­tra­tion for the high­way. I doubt very much they got any mon­ey af­ter I left, so I don’t think the con­trac­tor was paid.”

He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to say when it will com­plete the rest of the high­way project, in­clud­ing the ex­ten­sion from Pe­nal to Mon De­sir.

Ac­cord­ing to PM Row­ley, in Sep­tem­ber 2015, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship reaf­firmed its de­sire in writ­ing to con­tin­ue the high­way con­tract with OAS against the Nid­co con­sul­tant’s ad­vice. As such, Row­ley said it en­tered in­to an agree­ment with OAS called Con­tract Ad­den­dum No 2, giv­ing up its right to ter­mi­nate and the con­trac­tor can­not be li­able to the state.

Row­ley said in 2016, Nid­co, then un­der the stew­ard­ship of the PNM, ter­mi­nat­ed the OAS con­tract on the ad­vice of the en­gi­neer. The project was then giv­en to sev­er­al lo­cal con­trac­tors.

Last year, an ar­bi­tra­tion pan­el ruled that Nid­co was wrong to ter­mi­nate its con­tract with OAS be­cause it be­lieved OAS aban­doned the project in 2015. The mat­ter is still pend­ing.