An­na-Lisa Paul and

Shal­iza Has­sanali 

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) CEO Davlin Thomas says he has be­come the tar­get of a po­lit­i­cal smear cam­paign in which his pro­fes­sion­al im­age and char­ac­ter are be­ing tar­nished in a bid to dis­cred­it him.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he re­spond­ed to the cir­cu­la­tion on so­cial me­dia of a $500,000 rental quo­ta­tion for two 40x40 tents at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, for 30 days. Thomas said the doc­u­ment was “on­ly a quo­ta­tion” and not what the re­gion­al au­thor­i­ty had paid for with tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

Yes­ter­day, Jef­frey Lake, op­er­a­tions man­ag­er of Rick­el Ser­vices Ltd, the com­pa­ny from which the tents were rent­ed, said the NCRHA ob­tained the tents at a re­duced price to fit their bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion. He said their San­ta Cruz-based com­pa­ny was tar­get­ed be­cause every­body felt the Gov­ern­ment was spend­ing mon­ey bad­ly but said he had noth­ing to hide and some peo­ple were mak­ing mis­chief.

Ac­cord­ing to the first quo­ta­tion pre­pared by Rick­el Ser­vices, dat­ed March 17, the two mar­quee tents were each quot­ed at $8,000 per day for 30 days, amount­ing to $480,000 plus a $1,000 trans­porta­tion fee. In­clud­ed in the cost was Val­ue Added Tax of $60,125, bring­ing the to­tal to $541,125.

A sec­ond quo­ta­tion, dat­ed March 28, list­ed the cost of one 40 by 40 alu­mini­um struc­ture tent at $2,900 per day for 15 days with trans­porta­tion in­clud­ed at a to­tal of $43,500. With a sales tax of $5,437.50, the fi­nal fig­ure billed to the NCRHA was $48,937.50. For the month the NCRHA utilised the tent at the sec­ond quo­ta­tion, they were billed for $97,875.

Yes­ter­day, Thomas said the NCRHA had de­cid­ed to go with the sec­ond quo­ta­tion and would on­ly be pay­ing that bill. He de­nied there was any at­tempt by any­one to de­fraud the NCRHA, not­ing that mul­ti­ple quo­ta­tions are of­ten sub­mit­ted for ser­vices and equip­ment pri­or to any de­ci­sion be­ing tak­en.

Pressed to say how the ini­tial quo­ta­tion was over $500,000, Thomas said it was for a “huge mon­stros­i­ty of a steel struc­ture com­plete with lights, that we just weren’t in­ter­est­ed in at all.”

“We just want­ed some small­er mar­quee tents to house (EWM­SC) pa­tients for triag­ing,” Thomas said.

He said the cost of this was around $2,000 per day and the NCRHA got a dis­count on the fi­nal cost­ing.

Thomas, who is the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s cam­paign man­ag­er for Barataria-San Juan, claimed this was an­oth­er act of po­lit­i­cal mis­chief by an in­di­vid­ual he did not name.

“I am go­ing to en­gage the per­son at the high­est lev­el of the court. It is po­lit­i­cal mis­chief and I am be­ing tar­get­ed.”

Mean­while, Rick­el Ser­vices’ Lake said the $541,000 quo­ta­tion plas­tered on Face­book was de­signed to mis­lead the pub­lic, as it was not the fi­nal fig­ure paid.

“So this $8,000, as I said to you, was an orig­i­nal (quo­ta­tion) .... they (NCRHA) did not know their bud­get. I give them what our list price was. They (NCRHA) came back to me and said ‘hey, bud­dy I can­not af­ford that.’”

He said the com­pa­ny lat­er sub­mit­ted two re­vised quo­ta­tions - one on March 28 and on April 13 at a re­duced price.

“We re­duced it dras­ti­cal­ly be­cause of the cause of coro­n­avirus...the pan­ic. At the end of the day, this is us say­ing take it (tent) for $2,900 (a day). That is what they could have af­ford­ed, why should I say no?”

He said the com­pa­ny down­sized a mod­u­lar 100x40 tent to a 40x40 tent to suit the NCRHA’s needs. Ini­tial­ly, Lake said the NCRHA want­ed to buy the tent. In the first quo­ta­tion, he said they in­formed the NCRHA they on­ly rent items. 

“There was ab­solute­ly no over­pric­ing. It (tent) was ac­tu­al­ly un­der­priced. I have noth­ing to hide. It’s a po­lit­i­cal thing .... we are just the scape­goat. To­tal mis­chief. I am not sure it is our name but we got tied up in the mix ... be­cause every­body some­how feels the Gov­ern­ment spend­ing mon­ey bad. I am okay. We can de­fend what we have,” Lake said.

He not­ed that they are yet to be paid by the NCRHA, who has been one of their clients since they start­ed op­er­a­tions in 2015. The tent was re­moved from the com­pound of the EWM­SC on Mon­day.