Rose­marie Sant

Lo­cal con­trac­tors are op­ti­mistic that they will get a fair share of the pie when mega projects get go­ing in To­ba­go. It in­cludes con­struc­tion of 300 new hous­es, con­struc­tion of the new ter­mi­nal build­ing at the air­port and the San­dals and Beach­es Re­sorts.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Ram­lo­gan Roop­nar­i­nesingh said he would like to see a “six­ty per cent lo­cal con­tent” on all projects to be un­der­tak­en. That lo­cal con­tent, he said, must not just be “ag­gre­gate from To­ba­go, but we are say­ing equip­ment and oth­er re­sources which we have in To­ba­go should al­so be utilised.”

Roop­nar­i­nesingh said it is the “same bat­tle we have with projects in Trinidad. We want lo­cal con­tent on the projects and that must in­clude labour.”

He ac­knowl­edged that To­ba­go con­trac­tors may not have the ca­pac­i­ty to han­dle the mega projects on the cards, but he said whether the con­tracts are award­ed to Trinidad or for­eign con­trac­tors “we are look­ing for high­er lo­cal con­tent as the case may be.”

The air­port project alone is es­ti­mat­ed to cost half a bil­lion dol­lars and the con­struc­tion of hous­es will be done util­is­ing the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) mod­el.

Roop­nar­i­nesingh said he had been talk­ing to the THA “and every­one knows my po­si­tion con­trac­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go should be get­ting their fair share.”

He said a ma­jor ad­van­tage in us­ing lo­cal re­sources is that “the mon­ey stays around and there will be some type of growth tak­ing place.”

As he made the rounds of the me­dia to ex­plain in greater de­tail the $4.5 bil­lion bud­get, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance Joel Jack as­sured that there will be “an open ten­der­ing process and we will fac­tor in lo­cal con­tent to en­sure that To­ba­go con­trac­tors are giv­en a fair share of the con­tracts.”

That, he said, is “not unique, that is some­thing we will stress be­cause it is im­por­tant for our con­trac­tors to grow.”

Jack said what the THA would be look­ing at es­pe­cial­ly for the con­struc­tion of hous­es is “pri­mar­i­ly in the first in­stance val­ue for mon­ey, that the projects are de­liv­ered on time and with­in bud­get.”

Jack ad­mit­ted that the Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion had been very “vo­cif­er­ous” about the is­sue of lo­cal con­tent and he ex­pects that they will make a “strong case” to en­sure that the is­sue of lo­cal con­tent is ad­dressed on projects to be un­der­tak­en..

The 300 hous­ing units will be con­struct­ed at Shir­van and Jack said they will be con­struct­ed “with­in the next 12 months” once some de­tails are dealt with in­clud­ing the in­fra­struc­tur­al work to be done on the land and re­quests for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) and ten­ders will be in­vit­ed.

He said the in­ten­tion is to take care of the “very size­able ap­pli­ca­tion list,” which cur­rent­ly ex­ists for hous­es in To­ba­go.

Shir­van has al­so been iden­ti­fied as one of the sites for the re­lo­ca­tion of per­sons for con­struc­tion of the new ter­mi­nal build­ing for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, there had been “pock­ets of re­sis­tance” by some per­sons who are say­ing they “don’t want to move.”

But he said the “con­sen­sus” is that per­sons are will­ing to move but they want­ed de­tails which he said has since been pro­vid­ed “on what will be of­fered for the land.”