Amalgamated Security Services contracts ‘above board’

NATIONAL Security Minister Stuart Young slammed what he described as people spreading misinformation regarding the contractual arrangements for the procurement, installation and operations of the electronic monitoring equipment and prisoner transport.

In a statement in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Young recalled the House on Monday passed the Administration of Justice (Electronic Monitoring) (Amendment) Bill, 2020 to impement an electronic monitoring system in TT. He said Government has been working to implement the system and had to start from scratch to procure a system, while ascertaining the legal deficiencies in the legislation and correcting them.

Young said that in 2018, the ministry engaged iGovtTT to conduct a competitive open tender process for the procurement of a electronic monitoring system, including the equipment, licences, software, training and maintenance of the system.

He said Amalgamated Security Services Ltd in partnership with Israeli company, Attenti Ltd, was the successful bidder and was soinformed in January 2019.

Last April, Young said a contract was executed to provide a full turnkey electronic monitoring solution for the installation of software and hardware for a main site and a back up site.

“The contract included the supply of 300 devices (ankle monitors), the training of staff, the commissioning and maintenance of the system for a period of three years at a contract cost of $10.3 million (VAT inclusive).”

Young said the breakdown of that cost included 150 GPS tracking units (single piece solution) – $1.4 million; 100 domestic violence tracking units (two piece solution) – $1.035 million; 50 home confinement units (multi piece GPS tracking solution) -$520,183; software – $882,815; licences – $0.00; servers (ICT hardware required to outfit the server room) – $1.5 million;

ICT hardware for Disaster Recovery Site – $520,000; furniture for monitoring room – $72,000; five workstations with 24” monitor displays – $63,000; six 50” LED edgeless screens – $312,000; training for 40 people – $321,500; three years of field support, three years online support, three years of help desk support, maintenance and support for tracking units – $1.4 million; and three years system and software maintenance – $1.1 million.

Young said the system is being operated by staff from the ministry and not from Amalgamated. He also said no $80 million contract per annum was signed under the PNM with Amalgamated for the transport of prisoners. Young said Amalgamated first began transporting prisoners in 1996 under the then UNC government.

He said the ministry re-negotiated the prisoner transport contract downwards. “We currently have a one year contract for prisoner transport between Nipdec and Amalgamated Security Services Ltd in the sum of $25,939,031.04 (VAT exclusive), not $80 million.”