Augustine slams PM, denies favouring Trini contractors

Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Farley Augustine has dismissed claims from the Prime Minister that Tobago-based contractors are being discriminated against in favour of their Trinidadian counterparts. He also accused Dr Rowley of trying to mislead the public and “spewing covert racist rhetoric.”

Rowley made the remarks during his address at the Diego Martin West constituency conference on Wednesday night in which he claimed that Tobago used a $300 million allocation to hire Trinidadian contractors, owing to the perception that Tobagonian contractors were PNM supporters.

Last year the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) defeated the PNM 14-1 in the THA elections.

“Look what happened in Tobago: 14 seats and people say Tobago has found its feet, finally, and 14 days later, confusion reigns. Tobago got $300 million from the Minister of Finance for a development programme. They gave every cent of it to contractors in Trinidad.

“The money came into Tobago, THA writes the cheques to the contractors, and that money is coming back to Trinidad, because they don’t like the Tobago contractors because they are PNM."

Responding to Newsday's questions via WhatsApp on Thursday, Augustine rubbished Rowley's claims and said there were several inaccuracies in the assertions made.

"This THA never got $300 million for development projects from the Central Government, the allocation was never $300 million in the first place, the allocation was $264 million.

"Secondly, when we got into office in December 2021, Rowley’s party had already spent significant sums on election projects.

"Additionally, the three projects
that are being bandied about, have not been paid for by the THA upfront.

"The selected companies had to demonstrate the capacity to mobilise and finance these projects on their own and receive payments much later down the road."

Augustine further argued that final payments from the THA are due 18 months after completion.

Augustine has been accused by his own political leader, Watson Duke, whom he had a public fallout with, of favouring Trinidadian contractors instead of their Tobago counterparts.

Earlier this year, Augustine commissioned an audit into projects by the previous PNM administration. Augustine said the preliminary report into a road repair programme, has shown lack of evidence of work being done on some projects, even though full payments had been made and certificates of completion issued.