ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

Se­nior Re­porter

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (TRHA) mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar am­bu­lance pur­chase, fol­low­ing a for­mal com­plaint by Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris.

In a Face­book Live yes­ter­day, Mor­ris said the probe—even though it’s just start­ed—con­firms his long-stand­ing con­cerns about ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in how the am­bu­lances were bought. He again ac­cused the TRHA of wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and called again for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the en­tire board.

“We have paid more than one-and-a-half mil­lion dol­lars for am­bu­lances that can­not work in To­ba­go,” Mor­ris said. “This is the great­est pro­cure­ment scan­dal in the his­to­ry of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

He said he first wrote to the OPR months ago af­ter learn­ing that the TRHA bought 12 am­bu­lances cost­ing more than $18 mil­lion, or over $1.5 mil­lion each. Ac­cord­ing to him, the au­thor­i­ty ig­nored cheap­er, proven op­tions that were avail­able at less than $700,000 per unit.

Mor­ris claimed the am­bu­lances, sup­plied by a com­pa­ny from In­dia, ar­rived about a year af­ter pur­chase, but most re­main non-func­tion­al. He said on­ly two leased am­bu­lances are now op­er­at­ing on the is­land, while oth­ers are parked and “hid­den away from the pub­lic.”

Dur­ing his live broad­cast, Mor­ris showed one of the am­bu­lances parked at what he de­scribed as a pri­vate garage on the com­pound of a pri­vate prop­er­ty at an undis­closed lo­ca­tion.

He said To­bag­o­ni­ans de­served to see what was hap­pen­ing to the ve­hi­cles they paid for.

“This is where your 1.5 mil­lion dol­lars is,” he said. “Your hard-earned mon­ey, parked up in the bush­es while peo­ple can’t get an am­bu­lance in an emer­gency.”

He al­leged that the pro­cure­ment process was ma­nip­u­lat­ed to ben­e­fit cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

Mor­ris al­so said he was told by emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians that the ve­hi­cles were “not road­wor­thy” and “un­safe to dri­ve.” “Every time they try to use one, some­thing breaks down—brakes, en­gine, or bat­tery,” he said.

In the let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 28 to Mor­ris, the OPR con­firmed that it has be­gun an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the TRHA’s 2023 am­bu­lance pro­cure­ment, list­ed as PMT01/2022—Sup­ply and De­liv­ery of Am­bu­lances.

The let­ter, signed by Head of Au­dit and In­ves­ti­ga­tion Shar­da Nanan, in­formed Mor­ris that three of­fi­cers, Bry­on Daniel, Mel­lis­sa Ramku­mars­ingh, and Pratesh Ramjohn, have been ap­point­ed to con­duct the probe un­der sec­tion 41 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

Mor­ris has been asked to ap­pear be­fore the OPR’s To­ba­go of­fice to pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion and a writ­ten state­ment.

As of press time, the TRHA had not is­sued a re­sponse to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion or to Mor­ris’s lat­est al­le­ga­tions.

Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor al­so did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

The OPR in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes months af­ter Mor­ris threat­ened to lead a pub­lic protest out­side the Di­vi­sion of Health, call­ing for Dr Breb­nor to re­sign and de­mand­ing an­swers about what he then de­scribed as the $17 mil­lion “Am­bu­lance­Gate” scan­dal.

In re­sponse, TRHA Chair­man Chryst­lyn Moore and CEO Dr Del­mon Bak­er held a news con­fer­ence de­fend­ing the pur­chase.

They said the pro­cure­ment fol­lowed prop­er pro­ce­dure and was ap­proved un­der the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions. Bak­er added that the sup­pli­er had giv­en war­ranties and that the au­thor­i­ty could re­cov­er funds if the am­bu­lances failed per­for­mance tests.

Moore in­sist­ed the ve­hi­cles met the re­quired stan­dards when pur­chased.