The Trinidad and Tobago government says it will seek to amend the terms of reference of a Commission of Inquiry (COI) set up in 2019 to inquire into all aspects of the management of the land acquisition process for the construction of the multi-billion-dollar (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) Solomon Hochoy Highway extension in the south of the country.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley told parliament that Cabinet has asked the attorney general to examine and amend the terms of reference of the Sebastian Ventour inquiry with a view to adding to that examination the specific concerns raised regarding the former Brazilian company, Construtora OAS S.A. (OAS) that had been awarded the contract to build the highway extension from San Fernando to Point Fortin.
Rowley told legislators that the TT$5.2 billion projects is the single largest contract ever entered into by the state and on that basis “the accurate, undisputed facts” should be placed before the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
Prime Minister Rowley recalled that his administration had alerted the population that OAS, had in late 2015, and into early 2016, “basically stopped all works on the troubled highway project” that had been awarded by the National Infrastructure Development Company Limited (NIDCO) under the Kamla Persad Bissessar government.
“At that time abandoned workers were protesting daily, sub-contractors were claiming hundreds of millions of dollars being owed to them by an absent OAS, equipment was being seized, most of the expatriate OAS staff had left Trinidad and Tobago and no progress was being made by OAS on the highway construction. It was at this time and in these circumstances that the Government had to intervene to pay desperate, disadvantaged, and abandoned workers,” Rowley said.
But Rowley said an amendment to the OAS contract was made on the eve of the 2015 general election, which “amongst other things, removed a critical termination clause from the standard FIDIC Yellow Book contract under which the project was being executed.
“This removal of clause 15.2(e) is what has exposed the people of Trinidad and Tobago to a huge potential liability to OAS. What it effectively did was effectively shift ownership and control of insurance bond money, belonging to the government, away from NIDCO and into the hands of the contractor.”
Prime Minister Rowley said a recent decision delivered by a tribunal of arbitrators in a London Court of International Arbitration, between OAS and NIDCO surrounding the termination of OAS by NIDCO on July 6, 2016, led to Trinidad and Tobago having to re-pay the Brazilian company TT$852 million dollars “which the contractor could only have laid claim to only because some person/s in the last administration took the perverted decision to amend a contract to once again favor a contractor at the expense of the public interest”.
Rowley said the arbitral tribunal ruled that NIDCO was wrong to terminate OAS and that it could not rely on clause 15.2(e). However, this is being challenged by NIDCO via an application to the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago, saying “effectively, NIDCO is “appealing” the arbitration award.”
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