$4.5 B SQUANDERMANIA
… but race talk rules the land
TRINIDAD and Tobago will seemingly never know who ordered the illegal scrapping of the construction contract for the highway to Point Fortin.
That appalling decision would set back taxpayers a cool $852 million.
Similarly, T&T never found out who instructed the termination of legal action against the top brass of the State-owned oil company for a sensationally failed project.
That atrocious action cost taxpayers a heaping $3.3 billion.
Equally, no one has been held liable for the reckless decision to plough an estimated $250 million into the dead-end Train One of Atlantic LNG plant.
So, the highway construction fiasco with OAS Constructoro, World Gas-to-Liquids (WGTL) scandal, and ALNG debacle robbed hard-pressed taxpayers of more than – hear this! — $4.5 billion.
Several government ministries are collectively not allocated that sum in an entire fiscal year.
And still, there is public indifference to the outrageous waste of public funds even while thousands of jobless nationals are pleading for cruise ship posts.
With one in five workers on the breadline and the cost of food climbing each week, Trinidad and Tobago is mired in a senseless row over ancestral names and ethnic heritage.
Race talk is ruling the land while slipshod official decision-making is costing taxpayers deep into their ever-shrinking pockets.
In a sleight of hand, the Government has used the OAS issue to threaten a public probe on an irrelevant amendment to the legal contract.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, in a 24-page statement to Parliament, did not indicate who sanctioned the cancellation of the OAS agreement.
Rowley disregarded that core issue even though it was the reason why a London arbitration tribunal awarded OAS $852 million in compensation.
The Prime Minister, who spoke only after earlier disclosure by Opposition Member of Parliament Dr. Roodal Moonilal, blamed a 2015 election-eve amendment to the construction contract for the penalty award.
But the arbitrators were emphatic that the unilateral termination of the deal by National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO) was the reason for its hefty award.
And just so, a stupendous $852 million of precious taxpayers’ money has gushed through like a dose of salts, to adopt Jamaica’s Michael Manley’s previous depiction of T&T’s public spending.
There is a striking similarity to the retraction of legal action against then-Managing Director Malcolm Jones and other directors of Petrotrin for the botched WGTL venture.
That litigation had been filed by the administration of Kamla Persad-Bissessar, which branded the WGTL debacle as the result of poor decision-making and reckless use of national funds.
Documents from senior Petrotrin operatives revealed that the Jones Board had been properly counselled against venturing into WGTL, for a variety of technical and financial reasons.
Petrotrin was left holding the dirty end of the stick when its international partner went belly-up and the deal turned sour.
Then-Attorney General Anand Ramlogan filed legal action against the decision-makers, but this was surreptitiously withdrawn by the successor Government.
No one took responsibility for a questionable decision that cheated taxpayers of precious funds that could have been spent on senior citizens and single mothers.
Without a blink, the Rowley Government sold the incomplete WGTL plant at a peppercorn price to a company named Niquan, in what the Express newspaper termed “a highly opaque deal”.
The Express editorialised that “no one will be held accountable for the scandalous waste of public funds”.
The newspaper stated: “Given the potentially explosive situation at debt-ridden Petrotrin and the billion-dollar disaster at WGTL, it is mystifying why the Government would not be anxious to ensure full transparency about the WGTL-Niquan deal”.
And then there is the headstrong decision of State enterprise National Gas Company (NGC) to pump some $250 million into an ill-advised Train One in the midst of a shortage of natural gas feedstock.
Government officials kept telling an unsuspecting public that it was still pursuing Train One, even after it had decided to concentrate liquefaction at the three remaining plants.
Apart from losing a quarter of its potential capacity, the Government has squandered the public’s valuable funds.
Clearly, the authorities did not take a hint in the withdrawal from Train One of bptt and Shell, which were shareholders in the inaugural LNG venturing dating back to 1998.
As recently as last March, Rowley was insisting that Train One had not been abandoned, but a clinical analysis – and a formalised agreement – confirms that the industry would now rely on the other three plants.
The common chord in the three costly issues is the slapdash manner in which critical and costly decisions are made with respect to the public’s money.
On top of that, there is a chronic absence of disclosure, as if taxpayers do not deserve accountability and transparency on spending with their purse.
Equally aggravating are the blatant attempts at sidetracking and muddling society with futile and stupid talk about ethnicity.
With the country consumed with idle derision on race, $4.5 billion have been frittered away.
