Afra Raymond sits with host, Fazeer Mohammed on the Morning Edition television show to discuss the JCC’s position on the recent Beetham Water Recycling Project. Video courtesy TV6
- Programme Air Date: Monday 24th March 2014
- Programme Length: 0:22:23
Category: Public Procurement Reform
CRYSTAL CLEAR
NGC advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Ten Million Gallons | March 2014
NGC a\Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Point Lisas Supply | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Benefits | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Benefit to Citizens | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Decisive Leadership | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Water Route | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Energy Sector | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Tender Process | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Transparency | March 2014
NGC Advertisement for Beetham Water Recycling Project – Centre Spread | March 2014
The title for this column is borrowed from the ongoing, expensive advertising campaign being mounted by WASA & NGC to promote the attributes of the Beetham Water Recycling Project. (Click thumbnails at right to magnify)
The Project is in two stages – to Design and Build a water recycling plant at Beetham and to Operate & Maintain that plant for a period of five years. The recycled water is to be piped to Point Lisas for the cooling requirements of industrial customers, which we are told will ‘free-up’ about 10 million gallons per day of drinking water. This Design & Build contract for $1.043 Billion was awarded to SIS Ltd and its sub-contractors on 10 March 2014.
Despite the attributes presented by this project, there are grounds for serious concern as to the process adopted and the actions of the various public officials involved.
The Leader of the Opposition, Dr. Keith Rowley, first raised this matter in the budget debate of September 2013, following that with a formal complaint, on 10 March 2014, to President Carmona. In addition, Dr. Rowley’s Private Motion was to be debated in Parliament on Friday 28 March calling for the Prime Minister to stop the project and investigate the matter.
Having considered the available facts, the JCC issued a Press Release on 20 March 2014 calling for the project to be immediately halted. The JCC is also calling for an independent public investigation into this entire matter.
The JCC’s preliminary concerns are –
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The Budget?
The project is not mentioned at all in the 2014 national budget. It is not in the Budget Statement or any of the supplementary documents which record the figures for State Enterprises (such as NGC), Statutory Corporations (such as WASA) or the overall national accounts.That omission itself is grave enough to warrant a complete halt to this dubious operation, but that is not the worse of it. Not at all.When one carefully considers the 2014 budget, two even more serious issues become apparent.
- The first is the timeline. The NGC published the Request for Proposals (RFP) for this huge project on Monday 2 September 2013. The 2014 budget statement was delivered by Minister of Finance & the Economy, Larry Howai, on 9 September 2013.
- The second is that the 2014 budget actually has a section dedicated to ‘Water Resources’ at pgs 31-32. That section of the budget states that “In fact, Trinidad is making significant progress towards achieving water for all” and “Tobago is well within achieving water for all”. Details of upcoming projects were also provided – “We are expanding and improving wastewater treatment, collection and disposal systems in Malabar, San Fernando, Maloney, Cunupia and Scarborough, Tobago.”
So, the Minister of Finance & the Economy assured the nation that we are well on the way to ‘Water for All‘, only one week after NGC published that RFP. That sequence of events raise fundamental questions as to just what reliance we can place on our national budgeting process. Reports which are silent on large-scale proposals are unreliable. For our national budget to slide into that category of unreliable document is unacceptable.
What is more, Minister Howai’s statement as to the nation’s water supply and WASA’s intended projects really give us cause for a pause. If the Minister’s statements are reliable, why do we need this project? If those statements cannot be relied upon, we are really at a sobering moment.
The State Enterprises Investment Programme (SEIP) is an integral document in the national budget, which shows all capital infrastructure projects financed by State Enterprises and Statutory Authorities. NGC’s projects are detailed at pgs 8-12 of the 2014 SEIP, but there is no mention of this Billion-dollar Water Recycling Project.
The silence in the budget as to the Beetham Water Recycling Project is unacceptable. It raises the direct question as to the reasons for the actions of these public officials. It is unacceptable that a project of this size and consequence could be conceived and implemented as a ‘phantom project‘. This is a mammoth ‘off-budget‘ expenditure to be funded by Public Money, via the NGC.
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The implementing Agency
Apart from the ‘off-budget‘ issue, there is also the burning question as to the choice of the delivery agency. WASA was reported to have obtained a $246M USD loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in February 2013 for local wastewater management, to include this project. No reason was advanced for the decision to resile from that course of action in favour of the current procedure.
WASA is the Statutory Agency responsible for our country’s water supplies and sewerage, while NGC is the State-owned company established to manage the distribution and sale of our country’s natural gas. The JCC is questioning the reason for the participation of the NGC in this water treatment project. The Chairman of WASA, Indar Maharaj (who is also the CEO of NGC), stated that WASA did not have the money for the project as a way to explain how NGC came to procure these water treatment facilities.
Sen. Larry Howai, Minister of Finance The role of the Minister of Finance & the Economy is crucial in this matter, as that Minister has the authority to secure funding from either the IDB loan or other State resources, such as NGC, to have the project implemented by WASA.
The choice of NGC as the implementing agency for this Beetham Water Recycling Project is one which has serious implications in terms of oversight. The implementation of this project by WASA would have required the involvement and supervision of the Central Tenders Board. What is more, since the project would have been proceeding via a Statutory Authority, the tendering and appraisal procedure would have been open to challenge by means of a judicial review.
As things stand, after the Appeal Court decision in NHIC v UDECOTT (#95 of 2005), NGC, as the State-owned Enterprise implementing this project, is shielded from judicial review in its commercial contracting operations, unless evidence of fraud or illegality can be produced.
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What are the Commercial fundamentals?
Was a Needs Assessment carried out for this huge project? The 2014 budget detailed WASA’s significant pipeline renewal programme, which is expected to result in a significant reduction in the wastage of potable water. Desalcott is undergoing a 25% expansion in its output of potable water, from 32M gallons daily to 40M gallons, due for completion in April 2014. So, just what is really the plan?
The JCC is noting its grave concern that no Business Case seems to have been made for the advisability of this large-scale project on grounds of a value proposition. The long-term, underlying contractual arrangements which are driving this project remain obscured. Do these proposed arrangements improve or further diminish WASA’s financial standing? Do they benefit NGC and to what extent? What is the financial impact of these proposals on our country’s fortunes?
Despite the strong protests from the PNM on this matter, the JCC notes that the Opposition’s position on Public Procurement reform is unknown. The continued efforts by our Private Sector/Civil Society group to engage the PNM in dialogue on this question have been fruitless.
The lawful circumvention of our country’s oversight provisions in this matter is glaring. This situation amounts to a deliberate choice by public officials to take the path to obscurity, with diminished transparency in the execution of this huge project.
As I wrote in June 2008, criticising the previous administration’s mega-projects via UDECOTT – “Either the Cabinet or its advisers are responsible. We are either dealing with a lack of rectitude at the highest level of our republic or a sobering naïveté.”
Sad to say, that much is ‘Crystal Clear‘.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Government to Government arrangements (G2G) are made between two states, so that the less developed one can benefit from the technology and methods of the more advanced one. Given the scale of projects now being undertaken via these arrangements; the current high-level State mission to China, with its key objective of deepening the strategic ties; the long-promised and impending Public Procurement & Disposal of Public Property law and our recent G2G experience, this a critical issue to delve into.
These G2G arrangements have been controversial since their introduction to Trinidad & Tobago in the 1970s, during the ‘petro-dollar boom‘. The Central Tenders Board Act was amended in 1979 to exclude both State Enterprises and G2G arrangements from what was seen as the heavy hand of bureaucracy. In that period, the most memorable projects done via G2G were the Mount Hope Medical Complex, the Twin Towers and the Hall of Justice. There were other projects, often shrouded in allegations of corruption and improper practice. After strong protests, the then PM George Chambers appointed the late Lennox Ballah to enquire into the entire series of G2G arrangements. The Ballah Report was published in March 1982 and it should be required reading for those who are committed to national development. Chambers accounted for the petro-dollar by reporting to a shocked nation that two out of every three dollars had been stolen or wasted. Most of the G2G arrangements were stopped after that publication.
Yet these damaging arrangements have now re-emerged and what is more, there does not appear to have been any fundamental improvement in our terms within the new agreements. Once again, despite the clarity of the Ballah Report and its publication, we do not appear to have the capacity to learn from our history. That is a fatal blind-spot in our society.
It is clear to me that G2G arrangements, as presently configured, are severely detrimental to our national interest. Supporters of G2G would say that those arrangements allow a more rapid pace of development at costs which can appear to be competitive.
The main criticisms of the existing arrangements are –
- Sidelining of the elementary Tendering Process – the procurement process is effectively outsourced, since the more powerful country has the right to select the contractor;
- Limited, if any, role for Local Participation in terms of labour, professionals or contractors;
- Weak or nonexistent contract controls, due to the disparity in power between the parties;
- Serious drain on Foreign Exchange;
- Lack of the promised Transfer of Technology.
The previous administration entered a high-profile G2G arrangement with China to build the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) in POS and San Fernando via a $100M USD loan. The fundamental injury this G2G did to the national interest was that it ceded effective control of the project to China, who exercised their rights by awarding these two huge Design & Build contracts to Shanghai Construction Group (SCG). The POS NAPA was a highly-controversial project, executed via UDECOTT, with Peter Minshall reportedly stating that the buildings looked like ‘copulating slugs‘. Many allegations were made against local designers, contractors and workers as the pressure mounted on the Manning administration.
We know that the design errors are legion at NAPA POS, arising mostly from the lack of consultation with user groups and the public. The costs of sidelining a proper consultation process are high, so this is a vital case-study of the heavy impact of those detrimental arrangements.
Strong protests were raised in the Parliament by the then opposition against the NAPA deal. Those people are now in government, the previous administration having suffered a heavy electoral defeat in what seemed to me to be a public rebuff at these kinds of arrangements.
But the real lesson for us here is the extent to which our national interest has been wounded in that the ability to renegotiate appears to have been compromised. Just consider that the incoming PP administration was obliged to ‘fall-into-step’ when expensive remedial works were required in 2011, which was the second year since NAPA (POS) was opened. In September 2011, the State took a further $210M loan from the Export-Import Bank of China to carry out remedial works at NAPA POS, those works to be done by the original contractor, Shanghai Construction Group. The normal procedure is for remedial works to be for the contractor’s account, but these G2G arrangements are not normal. Having been sidelined by the original project, our local designers, engineers, bankers, contractors and skilled trades-people were once again displaced by foreign interests.
What is worse, the original projected cost for NAPA (both POS & San Fernando) was said to be $100M USD and it was later disclosed that NAPA POS cost $500M TTD, before the remedial works of $210M. You see?
One would think that with the high cost of remedial works at NAPA POS having been revealed in September 2011, the present administration would have been cautious in embracing these G2G arrangements. But no, it did not
On Friday 2nd March 2012, the PM turned the sod for the Couva Children’s Hospital, to be built under a new series of G2G arrangements with China. The PM’s address contained a clear message as to the restoration of these arrangements to acceptability –
“…This is the first in a series of projects involving Government to Government collaboration which will yield tangible results that will benefit Trinidad and Tobago in a number of ways…”
That was the first direct, high-level statement by the Peoples Partnership administration on this critical development issue. The contractor selected by China was the said Shanghai Construction Group. But there was more.
In March 2013, Newsday reported that “…Government and the EXIM Bank of China yesterday signed a $1.8 billion loan agreement for the construction of the children’s hospital and three national sports facilities in Couva, and three multi-sports facilities in other parts of the country…”. Furthermore, according to that report “…The contractor for the projects is the Shanghai Construction Group of Companies, which Zhu said ‘is one of the best construction companies in China. We believe that under Shanghai, the two projects will be completed on time with the quantity and quality of work required of them guaranteed,’ he said…”. Clearly, SCG seems to be a highly-favoured firm of contractors.
There are serious issues of the Public Interest being negotiated and compromised in these large-scale and highly-secretive G2G arrangements. The JCC has repeatedly called for a complete re-examination of these arrangements so that the critical issues of national development can be properly advanced. The 42nd and 43rd recommendations of the Uff Report speak directly to these burning issues.
The new Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property law must include for proper scrutiny of these large-scale G2G arrangements. The government of the day has the right to enter into arrangements with its diplomatic partners, there is no doubt as to that. These G2G arrangements must be conducted in accordance with proper norms of transparency, accountability and consultation, so that value for money can be achieved. Our country has a poor record in this area. We must do better.
The Elephant in the Room
The huge potential supply of State-built, unfinished office buildings in our capital is the ‘Elephant in the Room‘. There are potent elements at play here in terms of the viability of the long-term and large-scale investments which have been made in Port-of-Spain by private and public capital.
At this point, taking account of offices over 25,000 sf in size, there are over 1,500,000 sf of incomplete offices in our capital. This article will examine the likely outcomes for our capital and those investors as the various projects are completed.
The State has 1,329,000 sf of incomplete offices in POS and the private sector has 224,800 sf. The State has virtually seven times more incomplete offices than the private sector and that is the ‘Elephant in the Room’. This chart portrays the reality – the details are set out in the table below.
The legacy of the POS offices built during the previous administration is a matter which deserves serious consideration. The sheer volume of offices built by the State during the previous administration is sobering – 2.3M sf. Given that Nicholas Tower – that elliptical, blue tower on Independence Square – contains 100,000 sf, it means that the State built the equivalent of ‘23 Nicholas Towers‘ in our capital in that period of rapid development.
We also know that there was no attempt at public consultation or feasibility studies by the State or its agent, UDECOTT. At the Uff Enquiry, the Executive Chairman of UDECOTT, Calder Hart, admitted that a feasibility study had been done for only one of those projects. That project is the International Waterfront Centre (IWC), which comprises the two office towers of 890,000 sf, the Hyatt Hotel, New Breakfast Shed and car-parking/outdoor facilities. Hart also admitted, under oath, that the value of the land had been omitted from the viability study for the IWC, so it was a bogus exercise. The break-even rent is the amount which must be earned by a project to repay the cost of land, construction, professional fees and finance. The IWC, repeatedly boasted-of as UDECOTT’s flagship project, is not a viable project, since its break-even rent exceeds the highest rents now earned by A-class offices in POS.
The Parliament has now relocated there during the Red House repairs and renovations. A number of other Ministries and Public Bodies have also started to occupy those offices.
The Office of the Prime Minister is now in the new 75,000 sf building on St. Clair Avenue, opposite to QRC grounds.
The rationale advanced by the Manning administration for that surge in office construction in our capital is that it would free the State from the payment of large monthly rents to private landlords. Although I made several requests, I was never able to get the actual figures for the rents paid by the State in POS. My own familiarity with that market allowed me to estimate the average rent at that time (2007-2009) at about $8-9 per sf. The break-even rents of those new buildings exceeded $25 per sf, so the costs of those office projects would never be recovered. I have read reports that the estimated cost of the Government Campus Plaza, which is the largest element in the POS offices, was recently stated by UDECOTT’s Chairman, Jearlean John, to be of the order of $3.2 Billion.
We can reasonably estimate that the rate of rents paid by the State for office buildings has now increased since 2007, in terms of dollars paid per sf.
The completion of those State-owned office buildings is therefore a matter of the first importance, given the high carrying-costs. There is also the significant issue of the high opportunity cost of the State continuing to occupy rented offices alongside virtually-completed offices.
Against this background, we are now seeing an active policy of decentralisation of POS offices by the present administration, with several Ministries and Public Bodies being relocated to south and central Trinidad. The decentralisation discussion is one which has been going on since the 1970s and it is an important issue to be pursued, in my opinion. That said, one has to wonder how is the decentralisation to be rationalised, given the existence of this over-supply of State-owned offices in our capital. That is a serious question which needs to be discussed if we are to achieve any proper resolution.
The completion of the State-owned offices is under the management of UDECOTT, the original developers, with recent disclosures from the Finance Minister of plans to sell the buildings and lease them back as a means of financing their completion. The terms of any such proposals would have to be carefully considered to avoid the mistakes and fraudulent behaviour of the past.
The completion and occupation of the State-owned office buildings in POS will pose an existential challenge to those private investors who have built offices for rent. The rental levels for offices in POS are likely to decline significantly, which will impact on the revenues of those investors.
Public procurement pressure
The complete overhaul of our country’s public procurement system is urgently required, given the daily reports of large-scale theft and waste of public money.
The last administration lost public confidence due largely to the high levels of corruption, as revealed in the Uff Enquiry into the Public Sector Construction Industry.
The JCC met in April 2010 with the leadership of the People’s Partnership at its request and with the media in attendance.
At that meeting, the People’s Partnership made three significant promises:
- Implementation of the recommendations of the Uff Report – This was the first item at the first post-Cabinet press briefing on July 1, 2010, with the Justice Ministry being tasked to implement those critical recommendations. That promise has been broken.
- Tabling of legislative proposals for public procurement within one month of an electoral victory. Then Finance Minister Winston Dookeran did lay two draft bills — a 1997 draft to repeal the Central Tenders Board Act and a 2006 draft Public Procurement Bill — so that promise was fulfilled.
- Creation of new laws for Public Procurement & the Disposal of Public Property within one year of an electoral victory. Despite the statements at pg 18 of the People’s Partnership Manifesto, the appointment of a Joint Select Committee (JSC) and many public pronouncements, that has not happened. Continue reading “Public procurement pressure”
The Uff Bluff
On December 11, I wrote ‘Invader’s Bay Review‘ in this space, calling for an immediate public review of that improper large-scale development being proposed on reclaimed State lands in west POS. I also took the opportunity to make the point that there had been no consultation on that proposed development and that UDECOTT’s repeated public statements that its operations are now compliant with the Uff Report recommendations are false.
UDECOTT’s response was to place full-page advertisements in the three daily newspapers, on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 December, in an expensive attempt to refute my criticisms. My letter to the editor, carried in this newspaper on the Sunday, put UDECOTT’s misleading advertisement in context and reaffirmed the continuing falsehood of their claimed compliance with the Uff Report. The episode is recounted here.
There are several lessons one can draw from this exchange – the sheer hostility to the truth which is now becoming a disturbing ‘new normal‘ in our society; the invisible hand of the bureaucracy in devising large-scale developments, stated to be for the benefit of citizens, without citizen inputs; the inescapable reality that these obstructive forces operate across and within all our political administrations.
Sunity Maharaj wrote a fine overview of these burning issues in ‘Amandla! Now listen to the people‘ in the 15 December Sunday Express. In that article, Sunity detailed the development of a perverse consultation industry “Its specialty is in designing events that look like consultation, sound like consultation but do not actually involve consultation…”.
There is a serious challenge facing us here, since there is no will to implement the beneficial recommendations contained in the Uff Report, despite the repeated false promises. The failure to implement those proposals is deeply detrimental to our society as it entrenches the colonial idea that development is not something which really concerns the people of this country. Worse, the deceptive policy of politicians claiming to intend to do the right thing, while doing the underhanded thing, is imposing a neo-colonial reality. The State has a duty to be exemplary in its conduct and for the State to fail to do so and to act deceptively in that failure, is to increase cynicism and instability in our society.
In addition to failing to implement the Uff Report recommendations, there was also another significant setback. The Enquiry website – www.constructionenquiry.gov.tt – which held all of the proceedings and evidence, became inaccessible at the end of 2010, about 6 months after the Peoples Partnership electoral victory.
The JCC has been pressing for the implementation of the Uff Report recommendations and the restoration of the Enquiry website. Those efforts have ranged from the Attorney General, who directed us to the Minister of Justice, to the then Minister Volney who ignored our three letters on the matter – see http://www.jcc.org.tt/uff.htm. When we pressed-on with Volney’s successor, Christlyn Moore, the exchanges were sobering.
The two previous Ministers of Justice – Volney and Moore – both claimed that the Uff Report recommendations were to be implemented by the impending Public Procurement legislation. Quite apart from the inordinate delay in bringing these critical new laws into being, that claim is entirely false, since only one of the recommendations, the 56th, relates to new Public Procurement laws. 90 of the 91 recommendations could have been implemented by now with no need to get any new laws passed or any use of valuable Parliamentary time. The JCC’s repeated offers to assist and advise in any working party for that purpose have also been ignored. The implementation of those 90 recommendations would have greatly reduced the criminal theft and waste of Public Money with which we are now beset. The failure to implement those recommendations is probably the largest single ingredient in the continuing decline in our ‘morality in public affairs‘.
Even worse is the steadfast refusal to reinstate the Uff Enquiry website. There is no way to tell if the website was deliberately removed or if there was a mundane technical reason for its disappearance. What we do know for sure is that there is solid official resistance to even offer a sensible explanation for the continuing refusal to reinstate.
It is critical for us to learn from our errors if we are to avoid a repetition and it is therefore important that we excavate those lessons so that they can be considered. To fail to do that is to thwart the entire move to a ‘developed nation status’. Our nation’s primary information needs to be properly documented and published so that anyone who wants to learn the lessons can do so.
The evidence in the Uff Enquiry offers a deep, unprecedented insight into the state of affairs in our country and the conduct of our substantial business dealings. That information is first-class primary source material for research and teaching in critical fields such as Government, Finance, Engineering, Surveying, Planning, Economics, Sciences, Law and Management. We cannot become a ‘learning society‘ if first-class primary information is suppressed. It does not matter how many universities we build or how many pupils we certificate, the ignorance of our own primary information will frustrate the drive to a higher level of education.
On 26 March 2013, then Minister Moore replied to the JCC –
“…It is inappropriate to make available the evidence revealed in the Uff Enquiry at this time as they may ground future criminal enquiry…”
On 23 May, we invited the Minister to reconsider her position, pointing out that –
“…To quote from the final remarks of the Enquiry Chairman, Professor John Uff QC Ph.D. – “…Finally we would like to thank the Press for their continued and expert coverage of the Enquiry; and the public for their unflagging interest in the proceedings. There are few countries in the world where an Enquiry into the construction industry could fill a prime time television slot for over a year. For me it has been a unique experience and I am personally honoured to have had the opportunity, as I hope, to serve the interests of the construction industry and the people of Trinidad & Tobago…” There can therefore be no doubt that the entire proceedings of the Uff Enquiry were published widely…”
This is the Minister of Justice, claiming that our request to reinstate this invaluable website, would amount to ‘making the evidence available‘. Evidence which had been widely televised, all day long and rebroadcast at night. I tell you.
The Minister promised to revert to us by the end of June 2013, but that reply never came.
So now UDECOTT’s stance is clearer, given the overarching policy of the State on these critical matters of public concern. I maintain that UDECOTT did not conform to the 17th Uff recommendation in its involvement in the Couva Children’s Hospital. That recommendation is –
“User groups and other interest groups should be properly consulted on decisions regarding public building projects, to ensure that relevant views can be expressed at the appropriate time and taken into account before decisions are made.” (emphasis mine)
But the current concern goes beyond the ongoing Couva Children’s Hospital, since UDECOTT is playing a leading role in the Invader’s Bay development. In December 2013, UDECOTT published full-page Requests for Proposals in the newspapers for Designers for Infrastructure Development of Invader’s Bay. UDECOTT is seeking to hire a designer for the infrastructure element of this large-scale development which means that the selected designers would have to conform to the client’s instructions in preparing their plans. The client’s instructions would have to be based on some kind of concept, proposal or outline. That raises the obvious questions of when were these concepts, proposals or outlines conceived and by whom? Most importantly, who approved these? We know for sure that there has been no consultation with the public, user groups or other interest groups.
So, we are witness to yet another episode of large-scale development being undertaken, in this case by UDECOTT, with none of the promised consultation.
Hence my title – The Uff Bluff.
Letter to the Editor – UDECOTT’s failure to consult response
In response to a full page UDECOTT advert (embedded below) in response to my article “Invader’s Bay Review” (excerpted above), also published in the Business Express.
From: Afra Raymond <afraraymond@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 9:30 AM
Subject: Letter to the Editor – UDECOTT’s failure to consult
To: Editors of daily newspapers. Email addresses withheldThe 17th recommendation of the Uff Report is –
“User groups and other interest groups should be properly consulted on decisions regarding public building projects, to ensure that relevant views can be expressed at the appropriate time and taken into account before decisions are made.”
The decisive part is ‘before decisions are made.‘
The Peoples Partnership has not implemented the Uff Report’s 90 recommendations as promised and there has never been an explanation of that failure or refusal to carry out those critical measures. The sod was turned for the Couva Children’s Hospital on 2nd March 2012, at which time the project type, location, size, budget and procurement arrangements were all announced for the first time. Plainly, no consultation took place before those decisions were made, which was the point made in my 11th December article ‘Invader’s Bay Review’.
UDECOTT has now issued full-page newspaper advertisements to attempt to label my irrefutable observation as ‘reckless and damaging’ and so on. Yet another waste of public money, given that UDECOTT provided no examples of consultation before the key decisions were made on this huge project.
That pattern of secret development is inimical to our country’s progress. We must be properly consulted before decisions are made. We strongly criticised the last administration for that pattern of development and we will continue to make the same point. We must become a learning society.
Afra Raymond
POS
Invaders’ Bay Review
There now needs to be a complete and open review of the Invaders’ Bay matter. That is imperative if the public interest is to be safeguarded.
The catalogue of irregular dealings and improper procurement practice at Invaders’ Bay has now grown so that we are facing an important moment of decision. At this point there has been no announcement as to an award of contract or grant of any lease, so the threshold of binding legal agreement has not been crossed. In investment language, we are at the ‘inflection point’, which is where the prudent investor has to make a decision to continue or abandon a course of action.
This is the exact moment we should be calling for an open review of this major public project, before any binding commitments are made.
The Commission of Enquiry is an often-used device to probe into matters of serious public concern. In relation to construction and property development, we have had recent CoEs into the Piarco Airport Project, UDECOTT, Land-Date and the Biche School Project, to name a few.
The public has a sceptical attitude to these Commissions, since they never seem to bring the desired results in terms of arrests of prominent public officials or disgorgement of stolen monies. Many people dismiss CoEs as ‘talk shops’ set up to enrich lawyers, but I do not dismiss them as effective ways to serve the public interest. Despite the imperfections of the Enquiry process, including the fact that key witnesses can refuse to appear without incurring any serious penalties, there are real benefits. The main one, in my view, is that a CoE allows us in the public to learn about major matters of public concern which would likely have remained hidden.
That is the reason we need to retain this process so that the wrongdoing of the past can be exposed, so that we can have the possibility of avoiding those in the future. The weak point of the process is that it always takes place after the crimes have been committed, so during the Bernard Enquiry we were learning about the already-constructed Piarco Airport Terminal. Too late to prevent the massive theft and waste of Public Money.
That is why we need to consider a shift in our approach to the question of enquiries into questionable public projects, since the process is a reactive one, completely unable to stem wrongdoing.
At the ‘inflection point’ now occupied by the Invaders’ Bay project, we have an opportunity to examine this large-scale development before any significant expenditure of Public Money so that we can detect and deter wrongdoing. I am not yet settled in my mind as to exactly what type of review is best here, but whatever happens, it must be independent and committed to publication of its findings.
Some of the main issues which such an Enquiry or Review should examine are –
- Consultation – The complete lack of consultation in this large-scale development proposal for our capital city would be addressed by the process. The land is vested in UDECOTT via a lease and that organisation has repeatedly claimed to have implemented the recommendations of the Uff Report. The 17th of those recommendations states “User groups and other interest groups should be properly consulted on decisions regarding public building projects, to ensure that relevant views can be expressed at the appropriate time and taken into account before decisions are made”. Given the swiftness with which the Couva Children’s Hospital – which is being executed via UDECOTT – emerged in March 2012, we know for sure that those recommendations are not being observed by UDECOTT. Even looking beyond UDECOTT and its conflicting ‘versions’, we can see the contradictory actions of the Ministry of Planning & Sustainable Development supporting a public consultation process at King’s Wharf in San Fernando, yet refusing to hold public consultations on Invaders’ Bay in Port-of-Spain.
- Environmental Concerns – The Invaders’ Bay lands are extensive waterfront holdings in State property. The proper development of those lands must take full account of drainage issues and the impact on the environment, including the marine-life issues arising in any waterfront project. I have before me the EMA’s letter of 14 November, which confirms that there have been no requests or Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) applications for the Invader’s Bay lands. In addition, the EMA records provided to me show that the most recent application for a CEC at Invader’s Bay was in January 2007. It is not possible to obtain planning permission without EMA approval, so there are other implications of the lack of these approvals.;
- There is no link between the RFP and the other three strategic plans for the POS area. That violates the fundamental notion of strategic planning in that existing plans are ignored for no given reason. Piecemeal planning and development is detrimental to the Public Interest. So, who was the author of that RFP and who in the Ministry of Planning approved such a document?;
- The Request for Proposals (RFP) published by the Ministry of Planning in August 2011 seeking Design-Build proposals for the development of these lands specified an entirely inadequate 6 weeks for submissions. Whose recommendation was it to truncate the development process in this fashion?;
- The evaluation rules were only published after the closing-date for the tenders, so how did the proposers know what criteria to meet? That late publication is in breach of proper tender procedure, so the entire process is voidable and therefore illegal.
- Legal Instructions and advice – Also critical to any review process would be the details of the legal advice sought and obtained at various stages of this process. The Ministry is adopting a bizarre, secretive stance in which the advice is claimed to vindicate their actions ‘thus far’, yet that legal advice is being suppressed. The JCC has taken legal action to challenge that unacceptable secrecy in this most public matter.;
- Infrastructure – The 2014 Budget discloses a $50M allocation for infrastructure at Invader’s Bay, which of course is only a small part of this substantial cost. In the absence of environmental or planning approvals, it is difficult to establish the cost for proposals of this nature, since a design cannot be completed.
- Allegations of squatting – Finally, we turn to one of the most vexed phrases in our lexicon where land is concerned. The issue of squatting, which is the unauthorised occupation of land not in your ownership. From the sequence of images shown below, we can trace some elementary conclusions:
- the first (left) is a map/plan, which uses a dotted line to illustrate the boundary between the Invaders’ Bay property and adjoining Port Authority lands to the north…the physical boundary is occupied by a watercourse/ravine and those ‘Port’ lands are occupied by MovieTowne/PriceSmart, a green play park and the Marriott/BHP-Billiton building
- the second (middle image) is an aerial photo which shows the Invader’s Bay land bare of vegetation
- the third (image at the base) is an aerial photo which shows the Invaders’ Bay land re-vegetated with mangrove and what appears to be a bare excision, immediately south of MovieTowne’s western carpark…that is a gravel-paved area, which is south of the watercourse I mentioned earlier…it is accessed via a basic bridge from the said MovieTowne carpark.
(Click on images to expand)
2. Invader’s Bay cleared of vegetation.
3. Invader’s Bay regrown with area cut out for use.I am asking whether MovieTowne has a lease, licence or tenancy agreement to occupy those lands. Does MovieTowne pay any rent, licence fee or charge of any sort for the use and occupation of those lands? What action is UDECOTT taking on this? What action is the Commissioner of State Lands taking on this? It would be unacceptable for an entity in breach of State policy to benefit from the decisions of the State. I hope that is not what we are seeing here.
We need a full, independent and open review of this Invader’s Bay matter. Do you agree?
AUDIO: Heritage Radio Interview: Public Procurement, etc. – 04 December 2013
JCC President Afra Raymond interviewed on Heritage Radio 101.7FM by Hans Hanoomansingh to discuss JCC matters such as Public Procurement, Invader’s Bay and G2G Arrangements. 04 December 2013. Audio courtesy Heritage Radio 101.7 FM
- Programme Date: Wednesday, 04 December 2013
- Programme Length: 1:23:27
Invader’s Bay part 3: MORE Invaders Bay Ingredients
I closed last week’s article by restating my view that all the ingredients for corruption were present at Invader’s Bay.
What are those ingredients?
Here is my list –
- Extensive public assets coming onto the market, in turbid circumstances. Those assets can include property, concessions, contracts and jobs;
- Questions of access to the gatekeepers – in these scenarios, some people will have unbelievable access to the decision-makers;
- Conflicting and confusing versions of the project or proposal. The confusion is as persistent as it is deliberate, a part of the tangled web.
- Blatant double-standards and lying is the norm in these situations;
- Apart from ceremonial fluff, such as sod-turnings and ribbon-cuttings, there is no intention whatsoever to give any proper public account or statement of intentions. True transparency is evaded like taxes;
- Professional Civil Servants who are unable or unwilling to insist on the maintenance of minimum standards;
Extensive Public Assets
These lands are estimated to be worth in excess of $1.2Bn at today’s priced, that means the unimproved value. Although the lands are reclaimed, a significant amount would have to be spent on infrastructure to make the property ‘shovel-ready’ for development.
As I noted in the first in this series, there were conflicting claims on this aspect, with the selected developers claiming extensive infrastructure expenses as a way to reduce what they would pay for the land. There were no estimates given for the developers’ cost of infrastructure, but I noted that the National Budget for 2014 had specified, at pg 89 of the Public Sector Investment Program, that there would be publicly-funded ‘Infrastructure Development’ at Invader’s Bay.
I have been assisted by some of the professionals in the very Ministry of Planning & Sustainable Development in identifying that item as being a $50M allocation for 2014. The actual works are unspecified, so it is difficult to be certain what is included. It certainly seems a modest sum given the size and peculiar challenges posed by the Invader’s Bay property.
In addition to the obvious public asset of the actual property, readers should note that assets in this context can include concessions. In this context that can mean maritime & docking concessions as well as tax concessions, so we will have to maintain full vigilance to safeguard the public interest.
As a first position, all the details of the overall agreements must be published for public consideration at the earliest opportunity. This is no minor point, since really huge sums of wealth can be transferred from public hands to private interests if proper transparency is not ensured. Just remember that in June this year while the President of the Peoples Republic of China was here there was the signing of a Government to Government Agreement. The JCC has lodged many strong objections to those agreements. How many readers will remember that there was an important agreement signed with respect to the Pitch Lake at that time?
To cite a press report –
…According to a release from Lake Asphalt of Trinidad and Tobago (1978) Ltd, the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding and a Confidentiality Agreement with Beijing Oriental Yuhong Waterproofing Technology Co Ltd of the People’s Republic of China is scheduled to take place at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain…
So, faced with a Freedom of Information Act which ensures disclosure, the new trend is to wrap-up the details in yet another layer of secrecy. We need to be alert to that trend. After all, this is the same Ministry which claims to have legal advice confirming that its actions conform to the Central Tenders Board Act, yet steadfastly refuse to publish that advice.
Access to the gatekeepers
One of the two successful proposers has been the MovieTowne principal, Derek Chin, whose confidence has been striking.
According to Mr. Chin, in an extensive interview –
…Chin has met with the Prime Minister and many government ministers seeking approval for this project.
Before Christmas 2010, he had a meeting with the Transport Minister Jack Warner, Foreign Affairs Minister Suruj Rambachan, and other ministers, at the Prime Minister’s Office. They all supported his plans. “I have been lobbying the Government for a year now, even before the elections. I sent in the preliminary sketches about the concept; I met 19 Cabinet ministers over the last six months. The next minister I am meeting is Bhoe Tewarie, Minister of Planning. He wants to see me. I also met with Jearlean John, Udecott chairman. She also loves it, but that was three to four months ago…
That interview was given in early July 2011, which is over one month before the Request for Proposals was published by the Ministry of Planning & Sustainable Development at the end of August. I tell you.
Conflicting and confusing versions
So, to return to the legal opinions, we have this swirling set of stories.
To date, Minister Tewarie has insisted that the project has been removed from UDeCoTT’s portfolio and placed within the Ministry of Planning. He claims that Cabinet approved this in 2011 and also insists that there is no tender process at Invader’s Bay. Of course it is impossible for the Ministry to proceed to invite tenders for anything without following the Central Tenders Board Act.
The first legal advice I saw was clear that there is indeed a tender process at work here and that the CTB Act ought to have been followed. Obviously, that conclusion did not ‘fit the script’, so an escape hatch had to be fashioned. Shortly thereafter another opinion was submitted by Sir Fenton Ramsahoye SC, on an entirely different set of assumptions which made UDeCoTT the central enabling agency in the entire scheme.
The approach endorsed by the Ramsahoye opinion flatly contradicts the version being advanced by Minister Tewarie.
That is the deep, intentional confusion being encouraged by public officials in this matter.
Blatant double-standards and lying
So, let us start with the role of the Ministry of Planning & Sustainable Development on the Invader’s Bay project. How does that Ministry reconcile its active role in seeking public views on the King’s Wharf project in San Fernando with its silence on Invader’s Bay in POS?
These are blatant double-standards of the worst kind. One can scarcely believe that there are professional civil servants who could condone this reckless and underhanded approach to national development. But there we have it.
When is the Ministry of Planning & Sustainable Development going to host a public consultation on Invader’s Bay? That is now an inescapable requirement. Sooner rather than later.
But that is not all. No, not at all.
This administration campaigned on the findings of the Uff Enquiry and made several public promises to implement the 91 recommendations of the Uff Report. Such was the importance of the matter in the political agenda that it formed the first item of the very first post-Cabinet Press Briefing of the Peoples Partnership administration on 1st July 2010. That is a broken promise, since those Uff recommendations have not been adopted and the JCC’s many attempts to offer our assistance to achieve that have all been rejected.
The 17th recommendation of the Uff Report is –
- User groups and other interest groups should be properly consulted on decisions regarding public building projects, to ensure that relevant views can be expressed at the appropriate time and taken into account before decisions are made…
There has been no consultation at all on the Invader’s Bay proposals. Quite frankly, apart from rumours and conflicting press reports, I do not really know exactly what is going to be built or where or even when.
According to the iconic American jurist Louis Brandeis, speaking on eradicating corruption –
‘Sunlight is the best Disinfectant’
AfraRaymond.net 