A wide range of top-level industry experts -including contractors, engineers, architects, surveyors, planners, manufacturers and the local Transparency Institute-yesterday called on Prime Minister Patrick Manning to put the rapid rail procurement process on hold as more research on the project is needed.
By Driselle RamjohnAccording to these interest groups, the current procurement process is flawed and leaves room for corruption "that could be worse than the Piarco airport situation".
"To date we have received no justification for a rapid rail system as opposed to any other form of mass transit system. The Government should not embark on a major investment of public funds to the extent of whatever it could be, without some form of feasibility study and to go as far to implement a procurement process without a feasibility study is highly dangerous" said Mark Francois, president of the Association of Professional Engineers of Trinidad and Tobago (APETT).
Francois was speaking at a media conference hosted by the Joint Consultative Council for the Construction Industry (JCC) at the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers Association (TTMA) offices in Barataria yesterday.
The government's $15 billion rapid rail project is intended to ease the current traffic congestion on the roads.
The rail will run along the East/ West Corridor, with the first train rolling out by 2009.
Minister of Works and Transport, Colm Imbert, said yesterday that there has been extensive research on the local traffic situation for the past 15 to 20 years, "so saying there is not enough information is just not true".
Boyd Reid, secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute, said yesterday: "The procurement process has so far, in a number of respects, failed to meet the standards sets by the Government in the White Paper on Reform of the Public Sector Procurement Regime."
He added: "Here is the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken in Trinidad and Tobago being carried out without the various checks and balances, the controls, the institutions, the laws, the regulations and the regulators that this policy has laid down. This current process provides too many opportunities for the people's money to either wasted or stolen and we see here the possibility of great wastage."
In response, Imbert said: "I find all of this (action) very surprising because the fact that the rail project is being procured using a qualifications-based approach has been in the public domain for one year and at the first pretender meeting someone from Transparency International was present who commended the Ministry to its approach to this project. So I'm surprised that one year later all these interests groups can come out and say that they don't want this approach used.
"They don't want any change to the traditional process of tendering. They are asking for prequalification of contractors and tendering through a request for proposals. They are not in agreement with the new qualification based method of procurement."
Imbert added that the rapid rail procurement process is on track and should finish by the end of January 2007.
