JCC: Deal with 'massive debt' to construction sector

The Joint Consultative Council (JCC) is hoping the Government will address the “massive debt” owed to the construction industry in the upcoming budget.

In a letter to the editor on Saturday, JCC president Fazir Khan said the association noted the Prime Minister’s comments concerning his expectations for the budget.

Dr Rowley spoke about the upcoming budget during a news conference on Friday at his official residence in Blenheim, Tobago.

The news conference culminated a three-day Cabinet retreat which focused on the upcoming budget, the covid19 pandemic and other matters.

Alluding to Rowley’s statement that the Government did not have “elastic money,” in relation to doing “new things while old things may fall by the wayside,” Khan said, “The JCC sincerely hopes that the massive debt owed to the construction industry is not one of those ‘old things’ the prime minister is hoping will spontaneously reduce.

“The government’s unstated but transparent strategy since 2015 has been to ignore the legitimate debt owed mostly by special purpose companies (SPCs) to private companies, forcing them to seek redress in the courts, at high costs for associated legal services, further exacerbating their cash flow problems,” he claimed.

“The government has no problem paying for its share of legal services during this process, but surreptitiously relies instead, on the statute of limitations four-year bar on bringing civil matters to court.”

Khan added: “If one has no conscience one could say that it is a good strategy to reduce government debt..."

He claimed Finance Minister Colm Imbert is acutely aware of the hundreds of millions of dollars legitimately owed by SPCs like the Education Facilities Company Ltd, National Infrastructure Development Company Ltd and the Urban Development Corporation of TT, to the construction sector.

“The other part of this patently unfair game being played by the government at the expense of private companies that provide beneficial use to the public through SPC contracts, is to get the said companies to do more work with an unrealistic promise to pay old debts.”The JCC urged the Prime Minister to address this matter, which, it said, has already resulted in some companies having to close down while others “tether on the brink.

“Dr Rowley needs to take full responsibility for this travesty being deliberately perpetrated by his government. This perversion is perpetuated through this government’s dismal track record of not operationalising the Office of the Procurement Regulator (OPR) after the baton was passed in 2015 with the parent Procurement Act in place.”

Khan argued while it is unethical for the government to continue to issue contracts for projects that they have not secured financing for, without the procurement regulations (laid in the House of Representatives on July 2, 2021) enacted, there can be no lawful complaint brought to the OPR against this “wholly unsustainable, dastardly behaviour by our duly elected government.”