Gail Alexan­der

Siko­rsky he­li­copter be­ing re­turned to sup­pli­er or scrapped?

Af­ter the Op­po­si­tion raised that ques­tion yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley said a state­ment will be made on the con­tro­ver­sial Siko­rsky S76D he­li­copter by the rel­e­vant min­is­ter when Par­lia­ment re­sumes in Sep­tem­ber.

The he­li­copter was leased by the PP Gov­ern­ment in 2014. The UNC al­leged it was lat­er left un­used by the PNM Gov­ern­ment for five years, ground­ed at Camp Cu­mu­to .

It was the sub­ject of court bat­tle be­tween the PNM Gov­ern­ment and Amer­i­can he­li­copter sup­pli­er, Ver­ti­cal Avi­a­tion LLC who had sued Gov­ern­ment for (US)$13mil­lion for breach of con­tract for the he­li­copter which the Per­sad- ad­min­is­tra­tion PP ob­tained.

Gov­ern­ment filed de­fence in the US courts on the mat­ter and moved to write the US Jus­tice De­part­ment and FBI on its pro­cure­ment.

Yes­ter­day, this re­porter re­ceived so­cial me­dia video at 8 am show­ing a cov­ered he­li­copter on a long trail­er be­ing moved along­side a ship with con­tain­ers on it. At that time se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials con­firmed no new he­li­copter had been ac­quired.

UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal sub­se­quent­ly sent a pho­to of a cov­ered he­li­copter and called for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to give the cur­rent sta­tus of the Siko­rsky, query­ing if it was moved at night from Camp Cu­mu­to to Point Lisas port.

Mooni­lal said: “If so, for what pur­pose, and whether Gov­ern­ment has ad­hered to the lease stip­u­la­tions. And whether it’s be­ing re­turned to its sup­pli­er or be­ing re­duced to scrap.”

He added: “The min­is­ter must al­so in­di­cate whether or not Gov­ern­ment has ful­filled the terms and con­di­tions of the he­li­copter’s lease and al­so dis­close any agree­ment and terms with the sup­pli­er fol­low­ing any court pro­ceed­ings in New York on what quan­tum of monies tax­pay­ers must ex­pend.’’

Row­ley, speak­ing af­ter Cab­i­net yes­ter­day said, “The Op­po­si­tion would do well to keep qui­et on this (mat­ter) be­cause that is one of the al­ba­tross­es we found around our neck. ”

The PM added: “Some­body in the last Gov­ern­ment made an arrange­ment that cost mil­lions of dol­lars for a he­li­copter which large­ly couldn’t be utilised and the con­tract was such that the Gov­ern­ment was so tied up, the prover­bial mar­ket crab would be a laugh­ing stock as com­pared to that.“

“When we en­tered of­fice and saw the arrange­ment in place the Gov­ern­ment couldn’t con­tin­ue this for an item which was large­ly un­us­able. I give you the as­sur­ance when we get to Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber, the rel­e­vant min­is­ter will make a state­ment in the Par­lia­ment on that mat­ter.’’

Yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said the he­li­copter was idle when cit­i­zens were be­ing killed in the Gulf of Paria.

In Jan­u­ary, how­ev­er, then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the he­li­copter wasn’t con­fig­ured for law en­force­ment use but for ex­ec­u­tive use. He not­ed the for­mer prime min­is­ter rather than us­ing roads, of­ten used he­li­copters be­tween Port- of- Spain and San Fer­nan­do.

Young had al­so not­ed the he­li­copter’s big cost which un­der the five year lease agree­ment by the pre­vi­ous Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil could cost tax­pay­ers $1mil­lion a month.

Young said then Mooni­lal shouldn’t be too hasty to de­mand a pub­lic in­quiry in­to the is­sue since Mooni­lal may have ques­tions to an­swer on whether he (Mooni­lal) was a mem­ber of PP’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil which ap­proved this “very dis­ad­van­ta­geous and strange con­tract”.