RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal are be­ing called up­on to apol­o­gise to the peo­ple of T&T for di­vulging mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the cost of con­struc­tion works at the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in To­ba­go.

Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia made the call dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, as he sought to clear the air re­gard­ing fig­ures which have been quot­ed both by Mark and Mooni­lal.

Gar­cia said the al­le­ga­tions were made on Au­gust 26, 2019, where Mooni­lal called for a full in­de­pen­dent en­quiry in­to the re­fur­bish­ment works at the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence, say­ing that the project had jumped from two mil­lion dol­lars to $20 mil­lion.

Gar­cia said the UNC claimed ear­li­er this month that the cost again in­creased from $25 mil­lion and jumped to $63 mil­lion.

“Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, on No­vem­ber 14 in an ar­ti­cle on the Trinidad Guardian, said the project jumped from $17 mil­lion to $42 mil­lion. On Au­gust 28, its bud­get was $25 mil­lion and the project cost nev­er moved from $25 mil­lion to $63 mil­lion,” he said.

“Ude­cott nev­er con­ferred any cost over­runs. Ude­cott nev­er cer­ti­fied any pay­ments of $48 mil­lion and there’s no $15.4 mil­lion left un­paid.”

In a re­lease ear­li­er this month, Ude­cott ad­vised that by virtue of Cab­i­net Minute No 2015 of Feb­ru­ary 8, 2018, ap­proval was grant­ed for: an es­ti­mat­ed bud­get of $22,022,566.27 (VAT in­clu­sive) for the con­struc­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Res­i­dence in Blenheim Road, Hope, To­ba­go, and that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, in con­sul­ta­tion with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, had iden­ti­fied funds from its bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to meet the ex­pen­di­ture re­ferred to at 1 above.

It added that there was no project to “re­fur­bish” the Prime Min­is­ter’s To­ba­go res­i­dence, nor was the bud­get $25 mil­lion. The ap­proved sum of $22,022,566.27, which in­clud­ed Ude­cott’s project fees, was for con­struc­tion works, not re­fur­bish­ment works.

The con­tract was award­ed to Parks In­ter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed in the sum of $20,305,020.

Dur­ing the progress of the works, ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were iden­ti­fied as re­quire­ments for the res­i­dence and this re­sult­ed in a vari­a­tion to the con­tract in the sum of $8,150,131.86 VAT in­clu­sive. As a re­sult of the vari­a­tions, the con­struc­tion cost was re­vised to $36,552,181.

Not­ing that Ude­cott did not in­cur cost over­runs that re­sult­ed in a re­vised project cost of $63 mil­lion and there are no sums out­stand­ing to the con­trac­tor, Gar­cia called on Mark and Mooni­lal to apol­o­gise.

“Dig deep in­to your con­science, in­to your heart and find the strength to apol­o­gise be­cause we have demon­strat­ed that what you are say­ing is not true,” he said.

Twen­ty-six days for Red House ceil­ing re­pairs

Gar­cia al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­pel sug­ges­tions that the ceil­ing of the Red House’s North Cham­ber had col­lapsed last week.

“The Red House ceil­ing did not col­lapse and we sent out a news re­lease that a piece of mould­ing be­came de­tached from the ceil­ing be­cause of con­den­sa­tion,” he said.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the Red House on Tues­day, Gar­cia said the tech­ni­cal staff was em­bar­rassed by the “lack of tech­ni­cal knowl­edge of Sen­a­tor Wade Mark when he said the ceil­ing col­lapsed so the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the build­ing is in jeop­ardy. The ceil­ing nev­er col­lapsed.”

Gar­cia said re­me­di­al works are cur­rent­ly un­der­way and should be com­plet­ed in 26 days’ time.