Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt 

Two years af­ter it was es­tab­lished, the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en the de­ci­sion to shut down the Sec­ondary Roads Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SR­RIC).

On Thurs­day, the Gov­ern­ment moved to fire the ex­ist­ing board­­—deputy chair­man Wen­dell Seecha­ran, Lin­coln An­tho­ny, Neville Adams, Shaz­im Mo­hammed and De­bra James—and ap­point pub­lic ser­vants from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, which in­clude deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Jen­nifer Lutch­man as chair­man.

The com­pa­ny was first placed un­der the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment with a $100 mil­lion cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion when it was cre­at­ed in June 2022, but then moved to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) last year and will now be un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance as the wind­ing-up process be­gins.

The move comes af­ter for­mer chair­man Her­bert George re­signed and two au­dits are cur­rent­ly be­ing con­duct­ed in­to the com­pa­ny, amid ten­sions be­tween the com­pa­ny’s CEO An­to­nio Ross and MOWT and a com­plaint lodged to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) on al­le­ga­tions of col­lu­sion, price-fix­ing and bid-rig­ging, which was ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia.

On Wednes­day, Ross ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC), chaired by Speak­er of the House Brigid Anisette-George, and likened SIR­RIC to “an out­side child” of the MOWT. 

Guardian Me­dia was told the com­pa­ny’s board was un­aware of the PAAC meet­ing, as on­ly Ross and fi­nance man­ag­er Curlan Guisep­pi ap­peared on be­half of SIR­RIC.

At the meet­ing, R­oss said the SIR­RC had to re­spond to the find­ings of the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Cen­tral Au­dit re­port, which was com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted to MOWT this week.

De­spite this, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan yes­ter­day con­firmed that one day af­ter the hear­ing—at Cab­i­net on Thurs­day—the Gov­ern­ment took the de­ci­sion to shut down the com­pa­ny, as it had now be­come ir­rel­e­vant.

Sinanan ex­plained that when SIR­RIC was first con­ceived, it was to deal with sec­ondary roads in the cor­po­ra­tions. 

How­ev­er, with the pas­sage of the Pro­cure­ment Leg­is­la­tion and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form in the past two years, he said the man­date for sec­ondary roads now fell un­der the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, ren­der­ing the com­pa­ny ir­rel­e­vant. 

Asked why the boards were switched out, he said, “This is what usu­al­ly hap­pens when you are wind­ing down a com­pa­ny. That board will wind up the com­pa­ny, en­sure that con­tracts are fin­ished off and all out­stand­ing work paid for.”

Guardian Me­dia was told that while SIR­RIC was on­ly sup­posed to have about 12 em­ploy­ees when it was start­ed, giv­en that its fo­cus was on­ly on pro­cure­ment and su­per­vi­sion, the com­pa­ny now has 25 em­ploy­ees who will soon be giv­en sep­a­ra­tion let­ters.

As he wound up de­bate in Par­lia­ment last night, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed the mat­ter as “orgsanised ac­tion” to wind up the com­pa­ny. 
He dis­missed Oropouch MP Roodal Mooni­lal’s state­ment ear­li­er that the board was fired. He said as a re­sult of a wind-up ac­tion, the board was re­moved. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Com­pe­ti­tion with PURE

Al­ready, SR­RIC has used $70 mil­lion of the $100 mil­lion it was cap­i­talised with when set up in 2022.

The Sun­day Guardian had re­port­ed that when SR­RIC was moved to MOWT, Ross was di­rect­ed not to is­sue new con­tracts but did so with­out the ap­proval of the MOWT.

A con­cern was that the rates be­ing paid by SR­RIC were dou­ble what are present in­dus­try mar­ket rates.

Ac­cord­ing to SR­RIC’s web­site, it award­ed 52 projects for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2023 to fin­ish in Jan­u­ary 2024.

The web­site said the method in which the con­tracts were award­ed were “Se­lec­tive”.

The com­pa­nies award­ed are: Coos­al’s Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd—19 con­tracts; Conaft Ltd—16 con­tracts; Ricky Raghu­nanan Ltd—six con­tracts; Dan­ny’s En­ter­pris­es Ltd —five con­tracts; Gen­er­al Earth Movers Ltd—four con­tracts; Renold, Dex­ter, and Collin Cre­ative Con­struc­tion Ltd —one con­tract, Trinidad and To­ba­go In­no­v­a­tive Con­trac­tors Ltd - one con­tract.

In April, when Guardian Me­dia broke the sto­ry, Sinanan said, “We have ad­vised the com­pa­ny of the nec­es­sary Gov­ern­ment com­pli­ance re­quire­ments in ac­cor­dance with the state en­ter­prise per­for­mance man­u­al for State en­ti­ties as well as the Min­istry of Fi­nance re­quire­ments for the re­lease of funds.”

In Au­gust 2022, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of the SR­RIC. 

In his 2023-2023 bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had ex­plained: “Our road in­fra­struc­ture, which had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when re­sources were redi­rect­ed to the health sec­tor, would now un­der­go a ma­jor re­pair and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ex­er­cise.”

The SR­RC was cap­i­talised with an ini­tial $100 mil­lion and Her­bert George was ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

“A fur­ther $100 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed for this com­pa­ny in 2023, mak­ing a to­tal of $200 mil­lion im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able for re­pair of sec­ondary roads. We ex­pect the com­pa­ny to use these funds proac­tive­ly to car­ry out much-need­ed sec­ondary road re­pairs through­out the coun­try; Ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tions have al­so been pro­vid­ed for the 14 Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions,” Im­bert had said.

At Wednes­day’s meet­ing, how­ev­er, Ross said the MOWT’s Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) pro­gramme was giv­en more at­ten­tion than SIR­RIC. 

In 2022, Sinanan said the man­dates of the two en­ti­ties are dif­fer­ent. 

“There is no ex­pect­ed dis­con­tin­u­ance of the PURE Unit. The man­date of the two en­ti­ties are not the same. In keep­ing with the man­date of the MOWT, the PURE Unit main­ly ad­dress­es High­ways and main roads, while the Sec­ondary Roads Com­pa­ny will fo­cus on lo­cal Gov­ern­ment roads. The Min­istry will work with the new com­pa­ny to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance where re­quired,” he had said.

PURE be­gan as a short to medi­um-term so­lu­tion to ad­dress dis­tressed roads. 

Ac­cord­ing to the MOWT’s web­site, it “has since evolved in­to an en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for Project Man­age­ment ini­tia­tives that pro­mote healthy roads across the coun­try.”

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the man­date of SR­RIC is to de­vel­op the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture of sec­ondary roads by fo­cus­ing on road re­pair, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and up­grade works through­out Trinidad to en­hance road ca­pac­i­ty, im­prove ex­ist­ing road in­fra­struc­ture, and en­sure con­sis­tent road ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty through­out the coun­try.