Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (VM­COTT) whistle­blow­ers, in­clud­ing sev­en for­mer and cur­rent man­agers, are call­ing for an ur­gent in­de­pen­dent foren­sic au­dit of the state-owned com­pa­ny af­ter al­leg­ing cas­es of nepo­tism, mis­man­age­ment and im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices by its of­fi­cials.

The whistle­blow­ers de­liv­ered 14-page re­ports on April 10 to the of­fices of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, as well as the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan, but no ac­tion has been tak­en so far.

In terms of the im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices, the val­ue of the con­tracts in ques­tion range from $14,000 to a com­pa­ny owned by a close rel­a­tive of an of­fi­cial for print­ed T-shirts and a botched $1.7 mil­lion deal to pro­vide a mo­bile of­fice for TECU Cred­it Union.

Two of­fi­cials at VM­COTT are al­so said to owe large sums of mon­ey for ve­hic­u­lar ser­vices. Mean­while, the com­pa­ny is de­duct­ing NIS and BIR con­tri­bu­tions from em­ploy­ees, but is ow­ing up­wards of $2 mil­lion in pay­ments to the re­spec­tive statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties.

Sources said the di­rec­tors are turn­ing a blind eye to the pletho­ra of is­sues af­fect­ing the state-run en­ti­ty.

Cur­rent and for­mer man­agers who spoke to Sun­day Guardian com­plained that sev­er­al de­ci­sions made were not in the best in­ter­est of the ‘strug­gling’ com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, they said when they at­tempt­ed to steer the com­pa­ny back to best prac­tices, they were os­tracised, sus­pend­ed or fired.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact VM­COTT’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Natasha Prince via phone, email and mes­sages since last week for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

VM­COTT chair­man Neil Ben­net told Sun­day Guardian he was aware of the al­le­ga­tions. How­ev­er, he did not want to com­ment any fur­ther on the mat­ter which he said was now the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“These peo­ple (the man­agers and for­mer man­agers) have sent a doc­u­ment with these al­le­ga­tions to the min­istry, and the min­istry has in­di­cat­ed that this mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion and I’m not at lib­er­ty to talk about it be­cause there is po­lice in­volve­ment...,” Ben­net said on Fri­day while re­fer­ring us to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Cur­rent­ly, there are at least sev­en mat­ters in­volv­ing VM­COTT and for­mer man­agers be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court. VM­COTT is a whol­ly state-owned agency with a gov­ern­ment man­date to be the con­trol­ling agency to pro­vide fleet man­age­ment ser­vices to the pub­lic sec­tor and pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­ests.

There are fa­cil­i­ties lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain, To­ba­go and San Fer­nan­do.

In 2021, dur­ing a Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee Hear­ing in­to VM­COTT, then act­ing deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Dhan­mat­tee Ram­dath said that the min­istry was giv­ing VM­COTT ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10 mil­lion a year to fund op­er­a­tions.

She said VM­COTT has ei­ther bro­ken even or made a loss since in­cep­tion, but she put this large­ly down to debts owed to the com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer fi­nance man­agers, the com­pa­ny’s last com­plet­ed au­dit was for the fi­nan­cial year 2016 and that was fi­nalised in March of this year.

“VM­COTT’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion is hor­ri­ble. It’s ter­ri­ble. We are pay­ing TTPOST. We are pay­ing TECU. We are pay­ing TECU $25,000 a month un­til the debt (for the mo­bile site of­fice) is paid in full. NIS and BIR, we don’t pay for those things. We don’t pay WASA or T&TEC. In their opin­ion, all state en­ter­pris­es and min­istries are ow­ing WASA, so they will nev­er cut us,” a for­mer fi­nance man­ag­er, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held, said.

“I would be in­sist­ing that things be done in the or­der that they should be done, in terms of fol­low­ing prop­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices. They did not agree with me in the way I was ad­vis­ing them to do things ac­cord­ing to good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice. And so they kept on pres­sur­ing me to do things their way. I did not bow down to their de­mands, and so next thing you know, I was be­ing writ­ten to ask­ing for re­ports, and then I was sus­pend­ed and then ter­mi­nat­ed,” a for­mer HR man­ag­er added.

One for­mer op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, who joined VM­COTT in 2019 to 2021 af­ter work­ing at com­pa­nies in Trinidad and the Unit­ed States, said, “I had a very strong im­age of what a pro­fes­sion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion was (but) with­in days of work­ing at VM­COTT, I re­alised it was not the pre­vail­ing wind at the com­pa­ny there. There were nu­mer­ous ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that I spot­ted,” said the for­mer em­ploy­ee, who left the com­pa­ny in 2021.

The $1.7M TECU deal

In 2018, un­der VM­COTT’s cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship and board, TECU Cred­it Union hired VM­COTT to pro­cure a mo­bile site of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple cur­rent and for­mer VM­COTT man­agers, VM­COTT’s lead­er­ship at­tempt­ed to pro­cure a ve­hi­cle for the mo­bile site of­fice with­out any re­search or prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tice. A San Fer­nan­do-based au­to­mo­tive parts and car sale store was cho­sen as the sup­pli­er over more well-known ve­hic­u­lar and au­to­mo­tive com­pa­nies.

In Ju­ly 2018, the sup­pli­er was paid $1.7 mil­lion in full by TECU. How­ev­er, TECU nev­er re­ceived a ve­hi­cle to use as a mo­bile of­fice. TECU is cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing $25,000 from VM­COTT un­til the full bal­ance is paid off.

“They ad­ver­tised and got quo­ta­tions from five or six sup­pli­ers. They chose a per­son who had no ex­pe­ri­ence in that field–who could not pro­vide a war­ran­ty and whose price was not the best. They paid this per­son 100 per cent of the val­ue of the con­tract up­front, and no bus was ever sup­plied.

“The CEO asked me to help fix it. I don’t know how, but I made some en­quiries and the per­son they gave the mon­ey to had no con­nec­tion what­so­ev­er to Toy­ota—the brand they were go­ing to buy was a Toy­ota brand bus—and that per­son had no con­nec­tion to Toy­ota Trinidad or Toy­ota re­gion­al and Toy­ota Japan had nev­er heard of them,” a for­mer op­er­a­tions man­ag­er said.

In both the 2020 and 2021 fi­nan­cial re­ports of TECU Cred­it Union, which are pub­lished on their web­site, the VM­COTT deal is ref­er­enced.

In the 2020 re­port un­der the sub­head­ing ‘Re­cov­ery of Mon­ey Owed by Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (VM­COTT), it reads “Mr Steve Chadee sought an up­date on the pay­ment made for the mo­bile car­a­van, which nev­er ma­te­ri­alised and on which mil­lions of dol­lars were out­stand­ing. Mr Chadee high­light­ed the need for a ‘Fol­low the Mon­ey Pol­i­cy.’ In re­sponse, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the cred­it union in­di­cat­ed that the pur­chase of the Mo­bile Car­a­van was in­clud­ed in the strate­gic plan. VM­COTT was en­gaged to pro­cure the Car­a­van on TECU’s be­half and the deal had not ma­te­ri­alised. VM­COTTT in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion to re­pay the de­posit paid to start De­cem­ber 2020 to Q1/2021.

“The gen­er­al man­ag­er ad­vised that the sum of $1.7 mil­lion was paid in Ju­ly 2018, and de­liv­ery had been sched­uled for the first quar­ter of 2020. The sup­pli­er de­fault­ed and VM­COTT ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion for re­cov­ery of the sum.”

In the 2021 re­port, TECU’s CEO said the to­tal ac­qui­si­tion cost of the mo­bile car­a­van was $2.05 mil­lion. He said the cost of the car­a­van was $1.74 mil­lion of which $1.53 mil­lion was paid.

Sources said some of­fi­cials owe VM­COTT more than $154,000 for car re­pair ser­vices.

In an email en­ti­tled ‘Debt Re­cov­ery Ex­er­cise–Board Mem­bers’ dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 14, 2023, from a man­ag­er to the com­pa­ny’s CEO, the man­ag­er writes, ‘As you are aware, the fi­nance team has em­barked on a debt re­cov­ery ex­er­cise in an ef­fort to im­prove the com­pa­ny’s cash flow prob­lem, in or­der to sup­port the cost of op­er­a­tions. As such, I seek your sup­port to reach out to mem­bers of our board to set­tle their out­stand­ing amounts. These items would have been flagged by our ex­ter­nal au­di­tors dur­ing our 2018 au­dit.”

One di­rec­tor is list­ed as ow­ing $86,284, while his rel­a­tive is list­ed as ow­ing $45,686. An­oth­er di­rec­tor is list­ed as ow­ing $12,452.

The fi­nance man­ag­er made a pay­ment plan rec­om­men­da­tion in the email for the three debtors.

“The pro­posed lump sum pay­ment will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the out­stand­ing amounts for the (names di­rec­tor and rel­a­tive), as the du­ra­tion of just a month­ly pay­ment will be ex­treme­ly lengthy. This will im­me­di­ate­ly raise a red flag with our ex­ter­nal au­di­tors,” the email reads in clos­ing.

The car parts and me­chan­i­cal ser­vices are paid for by VM­COTT us­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

Among the oth­er al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against the ex­ec­u­tives is that they hired rel­a­tives for ser­vices pro­vid­ed to the com­pa­ny.

As ver­i­fied by a com­pa­ny reg­istry search, a close rel­a­tive of an ex­ec­u­tive is the own­er of an ap­par­el store hired to pro­vide T-shirt print­ing ser­vices for sev­er­al events. The two share the same last name, and the com­pa­ny’s reg­is­tered ad­dress is the home ad­dress of the ex­ec­u­tive.

Sun­day Guardian al­so has copies of an in­voice to VM­COTT dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 15, 2023, which shows that the ap­par­el store was paid $14,000–$13,300 was for front and back prints ($95 each), $450 was for VM­COTT graph­ics de­sign and art­work, and $250 was for a “digi­tis­ing and set up fee”.

“I did not have con­trol over any­thing. VM­COTT is abus­ing the sub­ven­tions from the Gov­ern­ment. They are pay­ing her (the ex­ec­u­tive’s) close rel­a­tive $14,000 in cash to print out T-shirts. Wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on shirts, event af­ter event.

“An ex­ec­u­tive’s close rel­a­tive is the sole food cater­er. They don’t do pro­cure­ment. No prop­er process­es and so on. Con­trac­tors don’t go through any kind of pro­cure­ment or best prac­tice, or any­thing like that,” a for­mer fi­nance man­ag­er said.

Ac­cord­ing to a for­mer fi­nance man­ag­er, the ser­vices are paid via pet­ty cash or cheque. The man­dat­ed three-quote sys­tem was not used to se­lect the ven­dor, breach­ing the com­pa­ny’s Pro­cure­ment Act.

“The Gov­ern­ment is asked with a mat­ter of ur­gency to in­ves­ti­gate the mis­man­age­ment/mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion and abuse of gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion used to pur­chase large quan­ti­ties of al­co­hol whole­sale and T-shirts for com­pa­ny events at VM­COTT,” a re­port sent by five for­mer man­agers to the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice read.

The Sun­day Guardian ob­tained a screen­shot of an email sent on No­vem­ber 2, 2022, en­ti­tled ‘Christ­mas menu’ from the cater­ing com­pa­ny’s own­er to a mem­ber of staff at VM­COTT.

The text of the email read ‘Please find pro­pos­al as re­quest­ed.’

It showed the pro­posed costs of each item to be pro­vid­ed to VM­COTT by the food cater­ing com­pa­ny.

The menu list­ing the costs of each item ap­peared un­der VM­COTT’s ad­dress.

As seen in fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments, the bud­get for the Christ­mas event was $15,000. $15,985 was record­ed as be­ing spent on drinks alone, while there was no list­ed ac­count of the mon­ey spent on the food.

Pet­ty cash and clash

As a state en­ter­prise, VM­COTT has a pet­ty cash lim­it of $15,000. Every two days, ac­cord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer man­agers, a gov­ern­ment cheque for that amount is made avail­able to the com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to the cur­rent and for­mer man­agers, com­pa­nies will on­ly take cash from VM­COTT be­cause no ven­dor wants to give cred­it to the com­pa­ny be­cause of its bad cred­it his­to­ry.

VM­COTT’s debt to cred­i­tors is in the mil­lions, ac­cord­ing to a for­mer fi­nance man­ag­er who worked at the com­pa­ny with­in the last six months.

“In the 2016 au­dit re­port, the au­di­tor said he’s un­sure if VM­COTT can con­tin­ue be­cause it’s a grow­ing con­cern giv­en the amount of debt. VM­COTT is on­ly stay­ing afloat be­cause of the sub­ven­tion. Oth­er than that, they would have closed down a long time ago.  

“What VM­COTT does is a cus­tomer would come in­to VM­COTT, you want to get it ser­viced. They will give you a free as­sess­ment and they will say you need to change tyres, you need to buy oil, what­ev­er parts you need to get. They are go­ing to tell you that they can source the parts for you and you will then go ahead, and VM­COTT will go and call ven­dors and get the prices and VM­COTT would add a markup to the cost they re­ceive from sup­pli­ers. VM­COTT will give you a quo­ta­tion and once you are good with it, VM­COTT would then use pet­ty cash now to go and buy the tyres, the oil and parts like that, and fix your ve­hi­cle,” the for­mer fi­nance man­ag­er said.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the man­agers, pet­ty cash is be­ing used for ser­vices that it’s not sup­posed to be used for.

In a fi­nan­cial doc­u­ment ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, it can be seen that more than $17,065 was spent on al­co­holic bev­er­ages for two events–$1,092 was spent on duck, $1,200 was spent on chick­en, $1,000 was spent on roti and $1,500 was spent on uten­sils for a Car­ni­val lime.

Sev­er­al man­agers who have chal­lenged the lead­er­ship’s de­ci­sions have been fired.

There are at least sev­en for­mer man­agers who have VM­COTT be­fore the in­dus­tri­al court for fail­ing to ad­here to in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions reg­u­la­tions.

“As an HR pro­fes­sion­al, I would be in­sist­ing that things be done in the or­der that they should be done, in terms of fol­low­ing prop­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices. They did not agree with me in the way I was ad­vis­ing them to do things ac­cord­ing to good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice. And so they kept on pres­sur­ing me to do things their way. And I did not bow down to their de­mands, and so next thing you know, I was be­ing writ­ten to ask­ing for re­ports, and then I was sus­pend­ed and then ter­mi­nat­ed,” a for­mer HR man­ag­er said.

NIS and BIR pay­ments

Ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al for­mer and cur­rent man­agers, while VM­COTT is de­duct­ing BIR and NIS con­tri­bu­tions from staff salaries, the com­pa­ny is not pay­ing them to the re­spec­tive au­thor­i­ties.

At a Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee in­to VM­COTT on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2021, CEO Prince ad­mit­ted that the com­pa­ny owed NIS $1.26 mil­lion and PAYE $1.1 mil­lion.

“We don’t have any prob­lems thus far (with pay­ing re­tirees pen­sions), they are re­ceiv­ing their con­tri­bu­tions. How­ev­er, we know that this is se­ri­ous, and long term it will af­fect their pay­ments and there­fore, we are work­ing on what­ev­er cash we have on hand to try and clear it up. I think we can do it even faster, but be­cause of our cur­rent cash­flow is­sue, I think that is ham­per­ing us from mak­ing these pay­ments month­ly … We are ow­ing a lot of sup­pli­ers that we are ow­ing a huge amount of mon­ey for goods and ser­vices they have pro­vid­ed to us,” Prince said.

Asked by the com­mit­tee’s chair­man Wade Mark if not pay­ing BIR and NIS pay­ments is il­le­gal, Prince re­spond­ed, “No, I am not aware.”

She said the is­sues pay­ing BIR and NIS start­ed in 2010.

“The mon­ey was used to fund op­er­a­tions, to keep us afloat, to keep doors open. It was al­so used to pay sup­pli­ers who want­ed to take lit­i­ga­tion against the com­pa­ny,” Prince said when asked what the NIS and BIR con­tri­bu­tions from staff were used for.

Dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings, Mark asked the CEO two times (al­so pre­vi­ous­ly in writ­ing) for de­tails about the re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages of the CEO and oth­er high-lev­el man­agers of staff, but he did not re­ceive the de­tails re­quest­ed dur­ing the hear­ing.

Calls, texts and What­sApp mes­sages were al­so sent to the line min­is­ter–Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan about the is­sue.

The Sun­day Guardian did not re­ceive a re­sponse.