THA: $6m spent on Scarborough redevelopment plan

More than $6 million has been spent on the Scarborough Redevelopment Plan project to date.

This was confirmed by THA Secretary for Infrastructure, Quarries and Urban Development (DIQUD), Trevor James, as he responded to a question posed to him about the project by Minority Councillor Petal Benoit-Daniel at Thursday's Tobago House of Assembly sitting.

James was asked for an update on the fees expended on the project thus far.

“To date, we have issued one contract on the Scarborough Redevelopment Plan project. That contract went to Jmetrix Ltd. The contract payment terms were divided into two parts – TT$3,486,362 and US$424,948. Those are all the costs that have been assigned to the Scarborough Redevelopment Plan thus far.”

He said the executive council decided to adopt the mandate of the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) as official government policy noting that critical to that mandate was the Scarborough Redevelopment Plan project and therefore the plan became official THA policy.

He added that a decision was taken by the executive council to engage the designers of the plan under a sole select procurement methodology.

Unsatisfied with the process of procurement, Benoit-Daniel, in a follow-up question said the procurement of the contractor is quite alarming, as she noted that there seems to be no procurement process in place adding that the mandate of the PDP cannot be deemed a process to engage a contractor.

In 2022, a feasibility study for the project was commissioned by DIQUD. In a press release then, the division said design firm Jmetrix Ltd will lead the study, and the findings should be delivered in March 2023.

James said, “One of the first notes that was passed (by the executive council) was the note to engage Jmetrix to start this feasibility. We are committed to delivering on our plan to rebuild Scarborough. We are committed to delivering a new port facility. We think this critical to our autonomy and we will pursue it 150 per cent.”

Earlier that year, the THA held three public stakeholder consultations on the redevelopment project.