Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent 

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) says it has le­gal op­tions to re­cov­er mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars if the am­bu­lances it bought are un­fit for use or fall short of con­tract spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

Af­ter weeks of pub­lic crit­i­cism over the pur­chase, the TRHA broke its si­lence to de­fend the process, yes­ter­day. 

Chair­man Christlyn Moore said the con­tract al­lows the au­thor­i­ty to re­cov­er its mon­ey if the sup­pli­er fails to meet its oblig­a­tions.

The in­for­ma­tion came af­ter To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris ac­cused the TRHA and the Di­vi­sion of Health of mis­han­dling a 2023 am­bu­lance con­tract. He claimed the pur­chase bal­looned from $5.5 mil­lion to over $17 mil­lion with on­ly four am­bu­lances de­liv­ered so far. He said there were re­ports that one am­bu­lance en­coun­tered prob­lems while trans­port­ing a pa­tient and called it a na­tion­al em­bar­rass­ment that war­rants a full crim­i­nal probe.

He called for the res­ig­na­tion of Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor.

Mor­ris al­so want­ed the TRHA board to an­swer ques­tions about cost over­runs and me­chan­i­cal prob­lems.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, Moore said, “If the am­bu­lances are not serv­ing our pur­pose, then we will get our mon­ey back.

“There is no it­er­a­tion where we will pre­side over pur­chas­ing items that can­not be used with no re­course.”

Moore and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dr Del­mon Bak­er de­fend­ed the pro­cure­ment of 12 am­bu­lances from Bio­med­ical Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed (BMTT).

Bak­er said the ini­tial in­voice from BMTT was $5.5 mil­lion. So far, the TRHA has paid $10,387,500 to BMTT for four am­bu­lances. The out­stand­ing bal­ance is $6,217,500.

Bak­er said the pur­chase was nec­es­sary af­ter To­ba­go’s am­bu­lance fleet col­lapsed dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, with just one ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tional at one point.

The TRHA first at­tempt­ed a se­lec­tive ten­der in 2022, invit­ing ma­jor ve­hi­cle deal­ers like Massy Mo­tors and ANSA Mo­tors. But Moore said none of the pro­pos­als met the spec­i­fi­ca­tions de­vel­oped by its in­ter­nal team.

The TRHA turned to emer­gency pro­cure­ment. A sec­ond ten­der was is­sued. Moore said BMTT was se­lect­ed af­ter it met all 41 tech­ni­cal cri­te­ria cre­at­ed by front­line am­bu­lance users and en­gi­neers.

Moore dis­missed the crit­ics.

“Go and buy an am­bu­lance any­where in the world for $300,000. We wel­come the at­tempt.

“Our pro­cure­ment head is in this room right now, and we re­lied heav­i­ly on his guid­ance and ex­per­tise,” Moore said. “We are clear that the gen­er­al mar­ket val­ue for am­bu­lances… was had.”

The TRHA said the am­bu­lances are un­der a three-year war­ran­ty, with the op­tion to ex­tend.