KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (VM­COTT) is seek­ing to trans­form the en­ti­ty from a ma­jor loss mak­er in­to a high-rev­enue gen­er­a­tor, the Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee heard that the State com­pa­ny is con­strained by mil­lions of dol­lars owed by gov­ern­ment agen­cies and for­mer ex­ec­u­tives.

At yes­ter­day’s meet­ing, VM­COTT chair­man Am­rall Mo­hammed said af­ter the cur­rent board was ap­point­ed last Sep­tem­ber, it found sev­er­al prob­lems, in­clud­ing the ab­sence of au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the past six years and un­qual­i­fied staffing.

At the meet­ing, com­mit­tee mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal raised con­cerns that VM­COTT was spend­ing more than it earned and re­ferred to a let­ter from the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor ad­dress­ing the re­moval of oil on April 29, 2025, a day af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Mo­hammed said the board was aware of the mat­ter, which in­volved oil val­ued at $132,000. He said four In­ter­me­di­ate Bulk Con­tain­ers (IBC) of oil were loaded on­to a truck and re­moved from the com­pound.

“That mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. An in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tor was ap­point­ed, and a re­port was done, and it is not with our lawyers with re­spect to ac­tions which will be tak­en with re­spect to the per­sons who have been cul­pa­ble, or it is al­leged that they were at fault,” Mo­hammed said

Speak­ing on VM­COTT’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, fi­nance man­ag­er Kim­ber­ley Re­my said for the year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 2025, VM­COTT gen­er­at­ed $8.7 mil­lion in parts and labour rev­enue, while oth­er in­come amount­ed to $894,000.

She said the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived a $10 mil­lion an­nu­al sub­ven­tion, which was main­ly used to cov­er salaries, while re­pairs to gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles amount­ed to $6 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly and were sub­sidised by VM­COTT.

“At the mo­ment, we do not have any out­stand­ing loans, but we have ac­counts payable of about $13 mil­lion. Just to clar­i­fy, the ac­counts payable are un­der re­view be­cause some of the debts have to be writ­ten off be­cause some of the com­pa­nies do not ex­ist, and some of the aged bills are very old, and we are un­able to ver­i­fy them from 2004 for­ward,” Re­my said.

She said ac­counts re­ceiv­able as of De­cem­ber 2025 stood at $18.9 mil­lion, net of 26 per cent rep­re­sent­ing old debt from 2000.

Re­my said the cor­po­ra­tion had strength­ened its debt col­lec­tion process, with three debt col­lec­tors and a le­gal ad­vis­er now as­signed to the fi­nance de­part­ment.

“We have met with Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and all these agen­cies that have out­stand­ing bal­ances, and they have com­mit­ted to re­pay­ing their bal­ances,” she said, not­ing that the po­lice were the cor­po­ra­tion’s largest debtor.

As of Tues­day, she said the TTPS had made pay­ments to­talling $700,000 since meet­ing with VM­COTT last De­cem­ber.

Mooni­lal al­so raised con­cerns about a for­mer cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cial us­ing fa­cil­i­ties and re­ceiv­ing a trans­port al­lowance while us­ing a cor­po­ra­tion ve­hi­cle.

Mo­hammed said the board found breach­es in six ar­eas of leg­is­la­tion and stopped those pay­ments in Oc­to­ber 2025 af­ter dis­cov­er­ing them.

Au­dit Com­mit­tee chair­man Khem­raj Nan­hu said top man­agers and board mem­bers had been us­ing the cor­po­ra­tion’s ser­vices with­out pay­ing, amount­ing to about $200,000.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Colm Im­bert raised the dis­pute be­tween VM­COTT and the TTPS over mon­ey owed. TTPS main­tained it had paid, while VM­COTT dis­put­ed that po­si­tion.

The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion as­signed a third par­ty to as­sess the ac­counts, and a Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers au­dit of out­stand­ing in­voic­es from 2023 to 2024 was sub­mit­ted to the min­istry. Re­my said the TTPS owed VM­COTT $7 mil­lion.

Speak­ing on VM­COTT’s strate­gic plan, Nan­hu said the cor­po­ra­tion had out­lined six broad goals aimed at trans­form­ing the en­ti­ty.

Among the rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mea­sures pro­posed was the ex­pan­sion of VM­COTT’s op­er­a­tions from two lo­ca­tions to eight.