KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

In­vok­ing late for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day’s push for lo­cal con­tent in State projects, a group of San Fer­nan­do con­trac­tors are de­mand­ing a “fair share” of work at the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment as they con­tin­ue camp­ing out­side the site in search of jobs.

Ar­den O’Gar­ro, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Vi­sioneer Con­struc­tion, said at least 50 small con­trac­tors from the south­ern city have been side­lined from sev­er­al mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar gov­ern­ment projects in favour of con­trac­tors from out­side south Trinidad.

The Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment is a pro­posed $100 mil­lion hous­ing project in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do, be­ing im­ple­ment­ed through a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship led by state com­pa­ny Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

Un­der the arrange­ment, the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides State land while pri­vate de­vel­op­ers fi­nance and con­struct mod­ern, un­sub­sidised homes aimed main­ly at mid­dle-to up­per-in­come buy­ers.

How­ev­er, the project has sparked con­tro­ver­sy and is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion over con­cerns about the trans­paren­cy of the con­tract award process.

Read­ing from a 1995 news­pa­per ar­ti­cle on the pro­posed Fair Share Bill, O’Gar­ro re­ferred to com­ments made by Pan­day on re­serv­ing por­tions of gov­ern­ment con­tracts for small busi­ness­es.

“This bill will make it com­pul­so­ry that some share of gov­ern­ment pur­chas­es be re­served for small busi­ness­es in all gov­ern­ment projects and con­tracts.”

In 2012, the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment sought to in­tro­duce a Fair Share Pro­gramme that would al­lo­cate a por­tion of pub­lic sec­tor con­tracts to mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es.

Since April 15, the group has been vis­it­ing the hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in hopes of se­cur­ing meet­ings with ma­jor con­trac­tors. How­ev­er, O’Gar­ro claimed they have in­stead been giv­en the runaround.

He said that while dri­ving to Port-of-Spain one day, he no­ticed grub­bing and clear­ing at the site, de­cid­ed to check it out and re­alised a hous­ing project was be­gin­ning.

They then at­tempt­ed to reach one of the con­trac­tors on the site in hopes of of­fer­ing their ser­vices as sub­con­trac­tors.

O’Gar­ro said sub­con­trac­tors on the site are com­ing from as far as East Trinidad, while con­trac­tors on the “fence­line” re­main un­em­ployed.

He said the group in­cludes con­trac­tors in­volved in gen­er­al con­struc­tion, plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal ser­vices.

De­spite be­ing from the city, none of the con­trac­tors were aware that the de­vel­op­ment was set to be­gin.

As one of the con­trac­tors who worked with Petrotrin, he said the 2018 clo­sure left many strug­gling fi­nan­cial­ly.

“For the past cou­ple of years, most of us have not had a job. We had the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project, too. Yorke built Skin­ner Park, the widen­ing of the road was done by Ju­nior Sam­my and Coos­al, the high-rise car park was done by Kee Chanona, and the con­trac­tors in the area have not been giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get any mean­ing­ful jobs.”

Sean Ed­munds, of Mag­ic’s En­er­gy, said con­trac­tors and res­i­dents from Co­coyea Vil­lage are not ben­e­fit­ing from a ma­jor project in their back­yard.

He said that de­spite it be­ing a gov­ern­ment project, there was no sig­nage in­tro­duc­ing the de­vel­op­ment.

Ed­munds said res­i­dents have al­so been deal­ing with dust pol­lu­tion and noise from the project.

He said en­ti­ties plan­ning to work in the com­mu­ni­ty must meet with res­i­dents like­ly to be im­pact­ed, adding that op­por­tu­ni­ties to earn could help mit­i­gate those is­sues.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said he was un­aware of the is­sue and could not com­ment un­til he re­ceived a re­port.