Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar are now in a war of words on the ANR Robin­son Air­port ex­pan­sion project in To­ba­go.

This, as Row­ley ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mak­ing a “scan­dalous out­burst and tor­rent of base­less al­le­ga­tions” in the wake of her ac­cu­sa­tions of mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion on the project by Gov­ern­ment.

In a What­sApp mes­sage yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dou­bled down on ac­cu­sa­tions first made at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress cot­tage meet­ing in Las Lo­mas on Mon­day night. Call­ing for a crim­i­nal probe of the project, she as­sert­ed Gov­ern­ment has been mis­lead­ing the pub­lic about the project’s es­ca­lat­ing costs. She claimed over $100 mil­lion has been ap­proved for project vari­a­tions, while Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has sub­mit­ted claims to­talling $204 mil­lion due to 1,127 days of de­lays.

“The doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence is shock­ing and this project re­quires a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The claim as­sess­ment doc­u­ments show mul­ti­ple in­stances of fail­ure to meet spec­i­fi­ca­tions and build­ing codes on the ter­mi­nal build­ing’s su­per­struc­ture and foun­da­tion,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed.

Re­it­er­at­ing her claim that $431 mil­lion in cost over­runs have been ac­crued, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the project to ben­e­fit Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) fi­nanciers.

“They must an­swer where the half bil­lion dol­lars in cost over­runs went. There is mas­sive in­com­pe­tence at the project when you read the re­ports. I am in­formed that some of the sub-con­trac­tors on the project are ma­jor fi­nanciers of the PNM GE (gen­er­al elec­tion) cam­paign,” she al­leged.

Pressed for ev­i­dence link­ing sub­con­trac­tors to the Gov­ern­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not re­spond.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment for at­tempt­ing to fast-track the project for a soft open­ing next year. She al­so claimed that CEP Lim­it­ed, the firm over­see­ing the project, was dis­missed for re­fus­ing to ap­prove sub­stan­dard work. She al­so crit­i­cised Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) chair­man Her­bert George, call­ing his state­ments in No­vem­ber about ear­ly project com­ple­tion a “bla­tant lie.”

In re­sponse, how­ev­er, Dr Row­ley dis­missed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tions as “a most wicked and ma­li­cious at­tempt to tar­nish a project that brings light to To­ba­go and to the na­tion as a whole.” He ad­mit­ted that some mod­i­fi­ca­tions oc­curred dur­ing con­struc­tion but as­sured the project has been con­duct­ed with in­tegri­ty.

“There have been some el­e­ments of vari­a­tion over its ex­e­cu­tion, and this is not un­com­mon in projects of this size and scope. The Gov­ern­ment is in a po­si­tion to jus­ti­fy every cent that it takes to es­tab­lish the fa­cil­i­ty. There is no pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct or scan­dal in the project.”

He ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of politi­cis­ing the project, claim­ing her crit­i­cism was de­signed to un­der­mine its suc­cess.

“The Op­po­si­tion Leader, who makes a ca­reer of not sup­port­ing any­thing that is good for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, has now turned her hate­ful gaze at this project and shame­less­ly de­cid­ed to tar­nish its glow and smear any and all who are as­so­ci­at­ed with it be­cause she be­lieves that it’s com­ing in­to be­ing is a po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit to the Gov­ern­ment that is re­spon­si­ble for it and she is hell-bent on cre­at­ing a ‘scan­dal’ over it where none ex­ists.”

De­spite Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims, Gov­ern­ment main­tains that the project will be com­plet­ed to the high­est stan­dards and in the best in­ter­est of To­ba­go and Trinidad.

Row­ley as­sured the pub­lic, “As the project is com­ing to a close in the com­ing months, I call on the Op­po­si­tion Leader to stop slan­der­ing peo­ple with her wicked ways. The Min­istry of Fi­nance will soon re­port on the fi­nanc­ing and op­er­a­tions of this project.”

Mean­while, for­mer T&T Con­trac­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion head Mikey Joseph urged cau­tion in the mat­ter, say­ing cost over­runs are not in­her­ent­ly in­dica­tive of cor­rup­tion.

“If a con­tract has a cost over­run and it’s in black and white, it can’t be cor­rup­tion. It is on­ly cor­rup­tion if it’s found that the mon­ey was not to do the work, that it was giv­en to some­body else... but you can’t say that in a po­si­tion like this. If the Op­po­si­tion Leader is read­ing from a doc­u­ment that was pro­duced from the job and the doc­u­ment speaks to spe­cif­ic things about the project, cer­tain­ly it’s not cor­rup­tion,” he ex­plained.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath not­ed that these al­le­ga­tions could in­flu­ence the two To­ba­go seats in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

“We have to think about what has hap­pened in the last year or more, the PNM’s near de­feat in the THA elec­tions, and we are about eight months be­fore we en­ter in­to the next elec­tion. We’re not deal­ing with 12 months.”

“That ANR Robin­son ex­pan­sion was sup­posed to bring a cer­tain sort of eco­nom­ic life­line to To­ba­go. It would have al­lowed for a larg­er air­lift of pas­sen­gers in­to To­ba­go. It was sup­posed to have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on lo­cal tourism, and in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el. You have to tie in that in­to how it’ll ef­fect the lo­cal econ­o­my in To­ba­go and the pol­i­tics in To­ba­go.”

At­tempts to reach NID­CO’s chair­man were un­suc­cess­ful. Ques­tions sent to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert via email were al­so unan­swered up to last night.

Mar­tin George:

Govt must come clean

Mean­while, To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man Mar­tin George has called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the al­le­ga­tions.

George told Guardian Me­dia that trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty are need­ed at this point to ad­dress the claims and re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence, and called on Gov­ern­ment to dis­close fi­nan­cial records and pro­vide a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion of the project’s ex­pen­di­ture.

“We re­cent­ly had the procla­ma­tion of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, and the whole pur­pose and rea­son and ra­tio­nale be­hind that was so that we could try to avoid sce­nar­ios such as this, so there­fore it would be a show of good faith by the Gov­ern­ment to ba­si­cal­ly come forth an­swer the al­le­ga­tions, show what has ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened, and if it is that they are able to dis­prove the al­le­ga­tions, then please do so.”

Say­ing he’s con­cerned about the project’s prac­ti­cal­i­ty and costs, he added: “We cer­tain­ly don’t want it in a sce­nario where the can­dle is cost­ing more than the fu­ner­al, be­cause you don’t want it to end up be­ing a big, ex­pen­sive white ele­phant, which has the ca­pac­i­ty, I am told, of maybe up to three mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year, when in re­al­i­ty, even Pi­ar­co doesn’t do num­bers like that.”

Ref­er­enc­ing the past con­tro­ver­sies in­volv­ing the Pi­ar­co Air­port scan­dal, George re­mind­ed Gov­ern­ment of the need for dili­gence to avoid sim­i­lar is­sues. He warned that with­out a clear re­sponse, lin­ger­ing ques­tions could lead to calls for a pub­lic in­quiry or even more crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

He not­ed, “If there’s ev­i­dence of that, we the cit­i­zens have to start hold­ing our pub­lic of­fi­cials ac­count­able for their ac­tions and in­ac­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to any wastage or al­leged wastage of pub­lic funds.”