As 2021 draws to a close, the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate news head­lines the world over.

How­ev­er, un­der the cov­er of COVID, crim­i­nal and cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as cas­es of in­com­pe­tence and mis­man­age­ment, re­main as present as ever.

Through­out the year, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk con­tin­ued its pur­suit of ac­count­abil­i­ty, truth and jus­tice.

This is a re­cap of some of the desk’s sto­ries in 2021.

In Feb­ru­ary, Joshua Seemu­n­gal in­ves­ti­gat­ed the state of the coun­try’s roads in the se­ries Pot­hole Par­adise.

The se­ries took an in-depth look at the caus­es of the poor state of the roads and of­fered pos­si­ble so­lu­tions to im­prove the road man­age­ment sys­tem.

For decades, re­gard­less of which po­lit­i­cal par­ty was in pow­er, com­mu­ni­ties across T&T have plead­ed for road re­lief.

Com­plaints were treat­ed, in most in­stances, with a se­ries of ex­pen­sive, stop-gap mea­sures.

“Some­times our coun­try’s bless­ings (fi­nan­cial) may not be as much of a bless­ing as we could imag­ine, be­cause it leads to oth­er things that are not so de­sir­able - one of which, I guess, is the whole is­sue of main­te­nance,” Civ­il en­gi­neer Lacey Williams said.

“There was nev­er re­al­ly any pres­sure put on us to re­al­ly jus­ti­fy the de­vel­op­ment or ex­pan­sion of the par­tic­u­lar net­work (road) or the main­te­nance of that par­tic­u­lar as­set through stat­ed poli­cies and strate­gies.”

How­ev­er, eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, due to the likes of the pan­dem­ic and low­ered oil and gas prices, meant the coun­try could no longer af­ford what it once could, lead­ing to fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of many roads.

Fund­ing for the Road Con­struc­tion/Ma­jor Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Project de­clined from $130 mil­lion to $75 mil­lion from the fis­cal year 2019 to 2021, while fund­ing for the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions for lo­cal gov­ern­ment roads and bridges de­clined from $77 mil­lion to $61.5 mil­lion dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

“We, gen­er­al­ly, have a well-de­vel­oped road sys­tem. How­ev­er, as most of us have ex­pe­ri­enced, with many of our roads, we seem to have dif­fi­cul­ty in main­tain­ing them in a man­ner that would not be detri­men­tal to road users,” Trans­port en­gi­neer Dr Trevor Townsend said.

The road con­di­tions are in­creas­ing the fi­nan­cial bur­den on mo­torists at a time when many are al­ready strug­gling to make ends meet.

“The con­di­tion of the roads di­rect­ly af­fects the life of your ve­hi­cle’s sus­pen­sion. The rougher the roads, the quick­er your sus­pen­sion is go­ing to wear out, and get bro­ken bush­ings, etc,” Rod­er­ick Pa­tience, the co-own­er of Cousin’s Ser­vices Au­to Car Care said.

“So, it’s that bal­ance you have to strike be­tween main­tain­ing your car and your avail­able in­come….We see a lot of pres­sure with that now - where peo­ple are hav­ing to stretch their dol­lar and yet main­tain their car.”

De­pend­ing on the type of ve­hi­cle, a dam­aged sus­pen­sion can cost mo­torists around $10,000, ac­cord­ing to me­chan­ic Bri­an Sil­va.

“My view is that we are at an eco­nom­ic point where we can­not af­ford to waste mon­ey...We need to make the best use of the mon­ey we have,” Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, and civ­il en­gi­neer, Fazir Khan said.

A ma­jor cause of road dam­age, ac­cord­ing to trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer Dr Trevor Townsend, is over­loaded ve­hi­cles.

“Some­times you see fail­ure along the ve­hi­cle tracks and that is a fail­ure due to over­loaded ve­hi­cles, es­pe­cial­ly for roads that have a lot of heavy trucks,” he said dur­ing a Feb­ru­ary in­ter­view.

The trans­porta­tion en­gi­neer said his ob­ser­va­tions of fail­ures in the high­way sys­tem picked up prob­lems of road rut­ting and per­ma­nent de­for­ma­tion of the road.

These prob­lems, he said, were like­ly a re­sult of over­loaded ve­hi­cles.

Ac­cord­ing to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, no mo­tor ve­hi­cle is sup­posed to ex­ceed a max­i­mum gross weight of 15 tonnes.

It added that the to­tal weight trans­mit­ted to the road sur­face by the wheels of any one axle of a mo­tor ve­hi­cle or trail­er shall not ex­ceed ten tonnes.

“An over­loaded ve­hi­cle that is twice what the stan­dard de­sign would be would cause 22 times more dam­age com­pared to an ad­e­quate­ly-loaded ve­hi­cle,” Civ­il en­gi­neer Lacey Williams said.

Be­cause of this, he said, re­search finds that a road typ­i­cal­ly de­signed to last 20 years be­gins to show se­ri­ous signs of stress by its sev­enth year.

If over­loaded ve­hi­cles were re­moved from the roads, it could save the coun­try ap­prox­i­mate­ly $58 mil­lion in road re­pairs an­nu­al­ly, di­rec­tor of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port High­ways Di­vi­sion Navin Ram­s­ingh claimed in March 2019.

De­spite this, law en­force­ment of over­loaded ve­hi­cles re­mained weak, ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try in­sid­ers.

The fine for over­loaded ve­hi­cles was raised from $750 to $8,000 in the gov­ern­ment’s 2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Dr Trevor Townsend al­so be­lieved that WASA’s in­fra­struc­ture is a ma­jor cause of de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road con­di­tions.

“If you dri­ve on a dry day, check your pot­holes and see how many of the pot­holes have wa­ter in them be­cause those pot­holes are be­ing cre­at­ed where there is ei­ther a leak­ing valve or a leak­ing pipe, or a house­hold con­nec­tion that was made and not prop­er­ly re-in­stat­ed,” he said.

And, in many in­stances, the road­way isn’t prop­er­ly re-in­stat­ed or re-con­sti­tut­ed ei­ther, he said, lead­ing to a poor foun­da­tion, caus­ing the road’s sur­face to fail.

Oth­er fac­tors like the pres­ence of heavy ve­hi­cles and poor drainage fur­ther dam­age the sur­face and oth­er lay­ers of the road, he added.

“We’ve talked about hav­ing a com­mit­tee to deal with util­i­ty re­pairs and stuff like that, but that was since I was in the min­istry in the 70s or 80s. We are now in the year 2021,” Dr Townsend lament­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Fazir Khan, the Min­istry of Works and WASA have been go­ing back and forth for decades.

He said, while the Min­istry of Works of­ten claims WASA leaks cause roads to de­te­ri­o­rate through leak­ing pipes and valves, WASA of­ten claims, in re­sponse, that many roads are not built cor­rect­ly, caus­ing them to slip, in turn, break­ing its pipes.

Both Dr Townsend and Khan agreed that with­out prop­er over­sight and prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween WASA and the Min­istry of Works over projects, there is a long-stand­ing cycli­cal is­sue.

Ac­cord­ing to JSC pres­i­dent Fazir Khan, a more proac­tive ap­proach needs to be adopt­ed in deal­ing with the is­sues fac­ing WASA, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Dr Townsend agreed, “It’s a whole com­bi­na­tion of things that are press­ing up­on us - at the same time, we are try­ing to de­vel­op new pipe sys­tems and road sys­tems - All of these are com­pet­ing for needs for a purse that we all have to ad­mit is much small­er than it used to be.”

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan has since re­vealed plans to es­tab­lish a road man­age­ment au­thor­i­ty- months af­ter Guardian Me­dia ex­posed the state of the na­tion’s roads.

An­oth­er cause for con­cern, ac­cord­ing to many in the in­dus­try, was the stan­dard of en­gi­neer­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Khan ac­knowl­edged that while both the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and Min­istry of Works and Trans­port have qual­i­fied en­gi­neers, there could be prob­lems with ad­e­quate train­ing.

He be­lieved that there should be a manda­to­ry reg­is­tra­tion of en­gi­neers, as well as manda­to­ry pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

While the stan­dard of work car­ried out by re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, and their en­gi­neers, is of­ten sub­ject to crit­i­cism, many coun­cil­lors main­tain that they are placed in an un­fair po­si­tion be­cause of the short­com­ings of the main­te­nance sys­tem.

Ac­cord­ing to UNC coun­cil­lor for Mon De­sir Deryck Bowrin, while the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was giv­en $78 mil­lion in the 2021 bud­get, the ma­jor­i­ty of it went to op­er­a­tional costs and salaries.

The re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion’s nine dis­tricts, he said, were giv­en $7 mil­lion in de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gramme fund­ing to split among them, leav­ing him with $300,000 for roads.

“$300,000 might pave about 600 feet of road­way here, so that is noth­ing in the whole scheme of things. And, when you pave from here to the next road, they’ll say you on­ly care about those peo­ple and you don’t care about the next set of peo­ple,” Bowrin lament­ed.

“I know the gov­ern­ment brought prop­er­ty tax, and it’s sup­posed to go to the cor­po­ra­tions. I don’t know how that’s go­ing to play­off. With that, ob­vi­ous­ly, it will help...It’s re­al­ly dif­fi­cult for any coun­cil­lor in this coun­try.”

Main roads and high­ways, un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, aren’t with­out their en­gi­neer­ing short­com­ings.

Drainage is­sues are of par­tic­u­lar con­cern, ac­cord­ing to Dr Townsend.

De­spite all the is­sues af­fect­ing the con­di­tion of the coun­try’s roads, by all ac­counts, there is no de­tailed or struc­tured da­ta pro­gramme, al­low­ing the rel­e­vant ac­tors to make in­formed de­ci­sions go­ing for­ward.

“We have a prob­lem. A lot of pub­lic bod­ies have a prob­lem col­lect­ing da­ta. There are pub­lic bod­ies spend­ing pub­lic mon­ey to col­lect da­ta, on be­half of the pub­lic, but this da­ta is not made avail­able to the pub­lic,” Khan lament­ed.

“In times of cri­sis, you have to do more plan­ning be­fore you act, and to do prop­er plan­ning, you need to have prop­er da­ta and analy­sis.” Dr. Townsend added.

Chaos at San­gre Grande Cor­po­ra­tion

In Oc­to­ber, Shal­iza Has­sanali re­port­ed that trou­ble was brew­ing be­hind the scenes at the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Her in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the Cor­po­ra­tion’s CEO Bet­ty Ann Di­al was the sub­ject of a probe by the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

The probe stemmed from a let­ter, writ­ten in March, to Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein by UNC coun­cil­lors Anil Ma­haraj, Ken­wyn Phillip, and Nas­sar Ho­sein.

A copy of the let­ter, ob­tained dur­ing Has­sanali’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion, list­ed 11 al­leged breach­es and sev­en ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ures by Di­al, in­clud­ing al­leged­ly mak­ing uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sions in­volv­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and fail­ing to fol­low the pro­ce­dures of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act.

Di­al de­nied the al­le­ga­tions.

The let­ter re­ferred to a fi­nance com­mit­tee meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 19, 2021, in which the coun­cil ap­proved a one-month em­ploy­ment pro­gramme for 50 street clean­ers and eight su­per­vi­sors - rat­i­fied by the coun­cil at a statu­to­ry meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 28.

There was an un­com­mit­ted sum of $204,000 for this pro­gram to ad­dress the need for ex­tra san­i­ta­tion, giv­en the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic.

Phillip made a re­quest for work to be­gin in Feb­ru­ary 2021.

At a Feb­ru­ary 4th meet­ing, Phillip en­quired about the pro­gramme, on­ly to be told there were more press­ing mat­ters.

It was brought to the coun­cil’s at­ten­tion that the cor­po­ra­tion was faced with a $2 mil­lion deficit.

Di­al in­formed the coun­cil that pri­or­i­ties must be set, say­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion should de­ter­mine whether the pro­gramme was fea­si­ble, in­stead of pass­ing a res­o­lu­tion with­out any dis­cus­sion or in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Dur­ing a March Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Phillip raised the mat­ter again.

This time, the coun­cil was told by Di­al that the bud­get di­vi­sion ad­vised that fund­ing un­der this vote should be used, in­stead, to pay off some of the cor­po­ra­tion’s out­stand­ing bills, in­clud­ing a $400,000 in­sur­ance bill.

UNC coun­cil­lor Calvin Seecha­ran asked if the coun­cil’s ap­proval would be re­quired for a trans­fer of re­leas­es, but Di­al said that ap­proval was not need­ed for a trans­fer of re­leas­es.

Phillip quot­ed Sec­tion 118 of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions’ Act, which stat­ed that all mat­ters of fi­nan­cial na­ture must be brought to coun­cil for ap­proval, ques­tion­ing if the res­o­lu­tion tak­en by coun­cil was il­le­gal.

Di­al said im­ple­ment­ing the pro­gramme would put the cor­po­ra­tion in a deep­er fi­nan­cial bind and once fund­ing be­came avail­able the san­i­ta­tion pro­gramme could be giv­en the green light.

Up un­til the time the UNC coun­cil­lors wrote Min­is­ter Ho­sein, the pro­gramme was not im­ple­ment­ed.

The let­ter to Min­is­ter Ho­sein al­so raised con­cerns re­gard­ing a no­tice­able in­crease in wages and CO­LA pay­ments dur­ing two months last year.

While the cor­po­ra­tion’s av­er­age month­ly wages and CO­LA bill have re­mained con­sis­tent at $3 mil­lion, they al­leged there was an un­usu­al­ly high pay­roll for the months of April and Sep­tem­ber of 2020.

An SGRC doc­u­ment iden­ti­fied as “An analy­sis of wages and co­la in fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2020” showed the pay­ment of wages and co­la as $4,585,433 in April, while Sep­tem­ber showed $4,454.138.

“The above nor­mal ex­pen­di­ture for the months of April and Sep­tem­ber 2020 was not ap­proved by the SGRC nor has any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or ex­pla­na­tion been pro­vid­ed to the coun­cil,” the fi­nan­cial state­ment stat­ed.

The coun­cil­lors not­ed in their let­ter that it should be of no small con­cern that in­creased ex­pen­di­ture for April and Sep­tem­ber amount to al­most $1.5 mil­lion.

“Ad­min­is­tra­tion and CEO have failed to pro­vide any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this in­creased ex­pen­di­ture in April and Sep­tem­ber 2020 and or ev­i­dence of coun­cil’s ap­proval for the same,” the let­ter said.

An ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty high­light­ed was the coun­cil’s ap­proval of $3,539,000 in wages, Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance(CO­LA), and over­time al­lowances for Sep­tem­ber’s 2020 Pro­gramme of Works sub­mit­ted by the lo­cal health and tech­ni­cal de­part­ment, while the cor­po­ra­tion’s fi­nan­cial state­ments re­port­ed ex­pens­es to­talling $4,948,785.

This rep­re­sent­ed an ex­cess of $1,409,000 over the amount ap­proved, the let­ter claimed.

How­ev­er, a cor­po­ra­tion doc­u­ment for wages and CO­LA over­time al­lowances for Sep­tem­ber found that this $1,409,000 ex­cess in ex­pen­di­ture had been ap­proved by the coun­cil.

An­oth­er in­con­sis­ten­cy high­light­ed in the let­ter in­volved the CEO pre­sent­ing to the coun­cil for ap­proval a doc­u­ment ti­tled project pay­ments from the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment for ap­proval for De­cem­ber 2020 at a statu­to­ry meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 28.

The doc­u­ment, the let­ter stat­ed, pur­port­ed to re­quest pay­ment au­tho­ri­sa­tion for 11 con­trac­tors to­talling over $1.7 mil­lion for lo­cal roads, bridges, drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion, and dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness.

How­ev­er, the doc­u­ment was not ac­com­pa­nied by copies of cor­re­spond­ing con­tracts to ver­i­fy whether the sums stat­ed on the doc­u­ment were cor­rect.

There were no sig­na­tures of any cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fi­cers to con­firm if the jobs had been com­plet­ed, and there were no con­trac­tor in­voic­es to sup­port pay­ments re­quests.

One glar­ing dis­crep­an­cy ob­served by the chair­men stemmed from a Jan­u­ary 28, statu­to­ry meet­ing ti­tled “Pro­gramme of Works for the month of Feb­ru­ary 2021” bear­ing the sig­na­tures of the CEO, prin­ci­pal med­ical and health of­fi­cer, pub­lic health su­per­vi­sor, and pub­lic health of­fi­cer came to coun­cil for ap­proval.

This pro­gramme fell un­der the purview of the cor­po­ra­tion’s lo­cal health au­thor­i­ty sec­tion.

The doc­u­ment gave a break­down of wages and CO­LA al­lowances of work­ers who per­formed most­ly san­i­ta­tion du­ties at 16 dis­tricts in the north-east­ern re­gion which was brought to coun­cil for ap­proval to­talling $1,378,110.

A pe­rusal of the doc­u­ments un­earthed two dif­fer­ent costs for work un­der­tak­en at the Monte Cristo area in San­gre Grande.

One doc­u­ment list­ed the ex­pen­di­ture at $52,020 while an­oth­er doc­u­ment signed by the CEO and three oth­er cor­po­ra­tion health of­fi­cers reg­is­tered the fig­ure at $526,020.

Di­al de­nied all the al­le­ga­tions, stat­ing that she has done every­thing above board.