The Estate Management and Business Development Company Ltd (EMBD) owes contractors some $859 million, a Joint Select Committee (JSC) meeting heard yesterday. Questions were also raised about the hiring of contractors at yesterday’s JSC meeting held in Parliament, Tower D, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain. Among those who appeared before the committee were the EMBD’s chairman Henckle Lall, consultant Kamal Sant and project manager Andrew Walker.
Lall, who said he took over some 18 months ago, told the JSC the organisation’s operations were financed by the Ministry of Finance. He said when the current board took over it realised there were significant cost escalations and a multi-million dollar debt to contractors. “So we had claims for hundreds of millions of dollars that came to us. We could not get the validity of some of the claims because there was work stoppage, suspension, contractors walking off because of lack of payment.
“So we decided to keep the projects going, ask the contractors to remain on the site and continue working but we will not pay for loss of profit and downtime. We will pay for certified work by the consultant...work that we could see on the ground,” Lall said. He added one of the critical problems encountered was lack of funding, especially to pay contractors on time.
Committee member and Minister of Public Administration Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan said what she had noticed throughout the EMBD’s entire submission was reference being made to an Independent Consulting Company. Walker said there were currently five consulting engineers with the EMBD. Lall said when the board took over in 2013 it had to go with the existing prequalified list of contractors.
“Last year around October we decided to open it up to the public again...to open the prequalification listing,” Lall added. Walker concurred, adding that the consultant engineer was hired as an independent firm in accord with the contract conditions.
“The EMBD in its initial stages started off under different management and because of what they didn’t do we are now reaping the [consequences] of that. The causal factors has to go back to the pre-planning process. Before you start any development you ought to have all your approvals which is done in the pre-planning stage. “So the cost that we are seeing now is the EMBD trying to react to all these things that should have been done in the era between 2004 to 2009,” Walker said.
He said between 2004 and 2008 more than 20 sites were procured without proper studies, resulting in poor site selection. On the issue of poor performance by both consultants and contractors, he said those who failed to perform had had their contracts terminated. Seepersad-Bachan said if there were effective and efficient project management there would not have been cost overruns and delays.
About the meeting
The committee was headed by Independent Senator Dhanayshar Mahabir who said the objective of the public hearing included the following:
1. To assess the systems in place for the administration of contracts for the development of land
2. To examine the status of outstanding payments and the arrangements in place for compensating contractors
3. To understand the relationship between the EMBD and the other state entities, in particular, Housing Development Corporation (HDC), Caroni Ltd, Ministry of Food Production, Land Settlement Agency, Environmental Management Agency, Town and Country Planning and the National Insurance Property Development Company Limited (Nipdec).