NADALEEN SINGH

nadaleen.singh@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to award Kall Co Ltd (Kall­co) a $400 mil­lion con­tract to con­struct the first seg­ment of the Churchill- Roo­sevelt High­way ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la. He said noth­ing is wrong with that de­ci­sion.

In mid-Oc­to­ber 2017, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD (Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed) CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, and three oth­ers were ac­cused of bid-rig­ging and ‘car­tel be­hav­iour’ in the hand­ing out of sev­er­al con­tracts dur­ing Mooni­lal’s tenure as hous­ing min­is­ter.

It amount­ed to over $200 mil­lion in pay­ments. Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly gath­ered ev­i­dence which formed part of civ­il claims to ren­der con­tracts with five com­pa­nies void and un­en­force­able.

Row­ley was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Break­fast with the Prime Min­is­ter event host­ed by the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain.

The Prime Min­is­ter said sub­se­quent to Kall­co’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion on the Mara­cas con­tract, con­trac­tors were in­vit­ed to bid by Nid­co.

The PM said, “Nid­co in­vit­ed con­trac­tors who were qual­i­fied, or who were able to do the job, Kall­co among oth­er con­trac­tors.

Kall­co’s bid was the low­est bid, the dif­fer­ence be­tween the high­est and the low­est bid was al­most $100 mil­lion.”

Row­ley added: “If there is grounds es­pe­cial­ly le­gal grounds for a con­trac­tor to be delist­ed then cer­tain­ly, such a con­trac­tor should not go for­ward, but as of now, if you ask the min­istry the ques­tion you are ask­ing me now, as to why con­trac­tor ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ forms part of a list or ‘B’ or ‘C’ should not be there be­cause of some­thing they did two months ago there is no sys­tem in that.”

He not­ed that Kall­co had the low­est bid which was a $100 mil­lion cheap­er.

Al­so crit­i­cal of the long time Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona took to ap­point the Pro­cure­ment Board, Row­ley es­ti­mat­ed by June 2018 the pub­lic would see fruit from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new board.