Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd of T&T (VM­COTT) is owed $37.4mil­lion since 2012 to date, but can­not go to court to seek out­stand­ing mon­ey owed by State agen­cies due to a Fi­nance Min­istry man­date.

And, state agen­cies have dis­re­gard­ed Cab­i­net’s note for them to use VM­COTT’s ser­vices.

Chair­man of VM­COTT Col (re­tired) Neil Ben­nett con­firmed this on Wednes­day when the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment ap­peared be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­prise) Com­mit­tee (PAEC).

The PAEC ex­am­ined VM­COTT’S au­dit­ed ac­counts, bal­ance sheets and oth­er fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2015 and 2016 and fol­lowed-up on im­ple­men­ta­tion of PAEC’s rec­om­men­da­tions in its sec­ond re­port.

Among oth­er mat­ters al­so aris­ing was Ben­nett’s view that women tend to make bet­ter de­ci­sions than men and VM­COTT’s rec­om­men­da­tion to pre­vent the TTPS hav­ing “grave­yards” of derelict ve­hi­cles.

Af­ter PAEC chair­man Wade Mark sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on VM­COTT’s in­abil­i­ty to pro­vide an­nu­al au­dit­ed ac­counts and re­cov­ery of re­ceiv­ables from State agen­cies, Ben­nett said the board en­tered (2016) at a chal­leng­ing time in VM­COTT when it couldn’t “en­gage in” monies col­lect­ed from debts owe.

Re­ceiv­ables were over $30mil­lion and VM­COTT pri­or to 2016 was tak­ing parts from sup­pli­ers and heav­i­ly, he added. Lit­i­ga­tion arose from the pri­vate sec­tor sup­pli­ers.

Ben­nett said VM­COTT had to de­cide to en­gage in pay­ments arranged be­tween those VM­COTT owed and it­self, – us­ing its sub­ven­tions– and al­so con­tin­u­ing be­ing a fleet man­age­ment provider, then to TTPS and PTSC.

Fi­nance Man­ag­er Bri­an Alien­dre said the to­tal owed to VM­COTT was close to $37.4mil­lion– owed over 2012 to present.

VM­COTT owes $8.6mil­lion to oth­ers . VM­COTT tried at­tract­ing more clients from the pub­lic. But Ben­nett said de­spite its fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, the Fi­nance Min­istry and Cor­po­ra­tion Sole man­dat­ed that the com­pa­ny can­not take a min­istry to court for monies owed. “We have guide­lines that in­struct us not to do that,” he said.

Ben­nett said VM­COTT is mak­ing every ef­fort month­ly to call/write debtors to re­trieve out­stand­ing re­ceiv­ables .

He said the com­pa­ny has kept the $37.4 mil­lion debt “alive” to pre­vent it be­com­ing statute barred. On monies TTPS owed VM­COTT since 2004, he said some was re­ceived. The col­lec­tion is on­go­ing. VM­COTT col­lect­ed $6.5mil­lion from PTSC.

Ben­nett said there was no ef­fort by pre­vi­ous boards/man­age­ments to re­trieve monies by en­forc­ing the ac­count­ing unit to col­lect.

On in­ef­fi­cien­cies cit­ed in a pre­vi­ous in­ter­nal au­di­tor’s re­port, Ben­nett said that was the as­sess­ment of what was go­ing on then.

He said there had been “mis­cre­ants” com­ing to work at VM­COTT and pri­or man­age­ment nev­er brought cer­tain things to the Board’s at­ten­tion. Ben­nett said there were many staff changes and tight­en­ing up.

In­ter­nal au­di­tor Learie Cum­mings de­tailed fol­low­ing up on re­ceiv­ables, doc­u­ment scruti­ny, ac­counts in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous man­age­ment, ac­count set­tling and restor­ing sup­pli­er re­la­tion­ships.

Ben­nett said the act­ing CEO, up­on her ap­point­ment, made the or­gan­i­sa­tion in” bet­ter stand­ing.”

The com­pa­ny’s act­ing CEO Natasha George gave her rec­om­men­da­tion to avoid hav­ing a “grave­yard” of TTPS ve­hi­cles–stan­dard­ise TTPS’ fleet with on­ly one or two types of mod­els to make main­te­nance eas­i­er.

She was asked by PAEC mem­ber Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye about a pic­ture of such ve­hi­cles and if VM­COTT could fix them.

George said those ve­hi­cles would have been parked there un­til sent to an­oth­er “grave­yard” for auc­tion.

“The prob­lem is we shouldn’t al­low it to reach that stage. Over a five- year pe­ri­od, one can look at the ex­ist­ing fleet, put them up for dis­pos­al, pub­lic auc­tion to get cap­i­tal,” George said.