Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) has had to step in to pick up bulk waste in a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) com­mu­ni­ty, al­though the con­tract to sup­ply those ser­vices was award­ed to Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, a com­pa­ny owned by Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed last month that at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Cum­mings have asked the po­lice to clear their client’s name af­ter he was ac­cused of en­gag­ing in un­scrupu­lous busi­ness deal­ings re­lat­ed to State con­tracts.

In de­fend­ing their client, the at­tor­neys men­tioned that Cum­mings’ com­pa­ny was award­ed six con­tracts by the HDC. One was for bulk waste re­moval at HDC’s Lisas Gar­dens, Cou­va, which is a pri­vate com­mu­ni­ty out­side the scope of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. How­ev­er, Lisas Gar­den res­i­dents claim they have nev­er seen any­one be­sides the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion col­lect­ing bulk waste in the com­mu­ni­ty.

New­ly in­stalled CT­TRC chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad said there were oc­ca­sions when the CT­TRC col­lect­ed bulk waste at Lisas Gar­dens.

“I spoke to the med­ical health of­fi­cer and he said there were spe­cial re­quests made at times on be­half of the coun­cil­lor for bulk waste col­lec­tion. There is a con­trac­tor there and that is some­thing that will be raised at the coun­cil meet­ing. I un­der­stand that the con­trac­tor is Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed. At times, the CT­TRC was called to as­sist, and this is based on re­quests through the coun­cil­lor af­ter res­i­dents claimed that they found the garbage was lin­ger­ing,” he said.

This was con­firmed by for­mer coun­cil­lor for the area, Ram­chan Ra­jbal Maraj, who said based on re­quests from the two schools in the area, the CT­TRC has had to col­lect bulk waste near­by.

“From a health as­pect, the school will call af­ter they do their tree-trim­ming and we will fa­cil­i­tate them. There were in­stances where there was a heavy pile-up un­til we start­ed to in­ves­ti­gate whether Pi­cal re­al­ly have that con­tract. And when we cer­ti­fied that it was, we pulled back on that kind of ser­vice be­cause peo­ple were not aware re­al­ly that Pi­cal was con­tract­ed to ser­vice the area and the first peo­ple they call is the coun­cil­lor, cor­po­ra­tion and the chair­man,” he said

Maraj said the CT­TRC still as­sist­ed when schools called but re­solved to de­sist from col­lect­ing bulk garbage and “al­low the con­trac­tor to do its work”.

“I re­cent­ly saw that the trucks (from Pi­cal Ser­vices) are more vis­i­ble now than be­fore,” he said.

Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed was award­ed con­tracts by the HDC for grass-cut­ting, garbage-col­lec­tion, bulk waste-col­lec­tion and dis­pos­al ser­vices. They were award­ed be­tween 2016 to 2017 and last year were all ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

HDC and Cum­mings re­sponds

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the HDC said it could not dis­close the val­ue of the con­tracts, how they were se­lect­ed or why they were ex­tend­ed.

“The HDC is ded­i­cat­ed to trans­paren­cy and must al­so safe­guard the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and pri­va­cy of con­tract-re­lat­ed in­for­ma­tion and con­trac­tors’ per­son­al de­tails. As such, we can­not dis­close spe­cif­ic con­tract dates, val­ues, or ex­ten­sion de­tails pub­licly. Our con­tract award process­es ad­here to rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions and may in­clude open ten­der, sole se­lect, or oth­er arrange­ments,” the com­pa­ny said.

“The Cor­po­ra­tion val­ues your un­der­stand­ing of our po­si­tion on these mat­ters. Pro­tect­ing the pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of con­trac­tors is in­te­gral to our pro­fes­sion­al and eth­i­cal stan­dards. The HDC is con­tin­u­ous­ly work­ing to en­sure that our pro­cure­ment process­es are trans­par­ent, eq­ui­table, and in com­pli­ance with all ap­plic­a­ble reg­u­la­tions. If you re­quire fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, please con­tact our cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions team at com­mu­ni­ca­tions@hdc.gov.tt. Thank you for your jour­nal­is­tic in­tegri­ty and con­sid­er­a­tion.”

When con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Cum­mings said: “I have no com­ment. I re­fer you to my at­tor­neys led by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC.”

Cum­mings’ con­tracts (Put in box)

• The grass-cut­ting con­tract to Pi­cal for HDC’s Ed­in­burgh 500 (West) De­vel­op­ment was award­ed on Au­gust 30, 2016, and ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

• The grass cut­ting for HDC’s Cou­va Ex­change emp­ty lots was award­ed on the same day and al­so con­tin­ues to De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

• The con­tract for garbage col­lec­tion for Block 7-20 at HDC’s Ed­in­burgh South Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment was award­ed on June 24, 2016, and ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

• The garbage col­lec­tion con­tract for Block 38-43 Ed­in­burgh South was award­ed the same day and ex­tend­ed to the same pe­ri­od. The HDC, in a let­ter dat­ed March 21, 2022, ex­tend­ed the con­tracts.

• Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed was al­so award­ed bulk waste col­lec­tion and dis­pos­al ser­vices at HDC’s 500 Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, Lisas Gardes and Em­ba­cadere De­vel­op­ment. The Ed­in­burgh 500 con­tracts were award­ed on Au­gust 28, 2017, and May 7, 2016, re­spec­tive­ly and ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

The Spe­cial Branch in­ves­ti­ga­tion

A leaked Spe­cial Branch re­port al­leged that Cum­mings con­duct­ed un­scrupu­lous busi­ness­es through two com­pa­nies con­tract­ed to the HDC, Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and Cyldeon En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (CEL). Af­ter the re­port was shared, Ja­cob said the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Bu­reau (FIB) was in­ves­ti­gat­ing Cum­mings.

In Oc­to­ber 2021, the po­lice ap­plied for pro­duc­tion or­ders for in­for­ma­tion from sev­er­al fi­nan­cial en­ti­ties as they probed pay­ments to com­pa­nies for­mer­ly linked to the min­is­ter. Cum­mings’s at­tor­neys ob­ject­ed to the po­lice’s ap­pli­ca­tion and sus­pend­ed the pro­duc­tion or­ders. Last Oc­to­ber, the judge hear­ing the case ruled against the ob­jec­tion by Cum­mings’s lawyers.

In an in­ter­view in May last year, Ja­cob said the FIB were con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. At a me­dia brief­ing a month lat­er, the act­ing Snr Supt as­signed to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB), Deryck Walk­er, said the in­ves­ti­ga­tions could take “from a day to ten years” de­pend­ing on what was un­earthed.

“Time is rel­a­tive, it de­pends on the com­plex­i­ty of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and it is dif­fi­cult to set a time to fin­ish any par­tic­u­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tion. As I said, I will not dis­cuss the par­tic­u­lar in­ves­ti­ga­tions and will speak in gen­er­al terms,” he said.

Six days af­ter Cum­ming’s at­tor­neys sought to have his name pub­licly cleared, Hare­wood-Christo­pher is­sued a mem­o­ran­dum to her le­gal de­part­ment with the sub­ject “Se­cret and Con­fi­den­tial Spe­cial Branch Re­port in re­spect of Mr Fos­ter Cum­mings MP. Cor­rec­tion of Per­son­al In­for­ma­tion Pur­suant to Sec­tion 36 of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.” She asked to be “kind­ly ap­prised of any up­dates in this mat­ter.”