Chamber: Payment at last for some Tobago contractors

TOBAGO contractors – some owed millions of dollars by the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) – can now breathe a sigh of relief as payments are finally under way, following months of foreclosure notices and the threat of bankruptcy.

Vice Chairman of the Tobago Division of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce Demi John Cruickshank confirmed this during a press conference on Wednesday at their Scarborough office.

“As around the first or the third of February, funds were transferred to the Division of Works and Infrastructure to pay some contractors – not all contractors. Some contractors would be paid as of Monday gone (February 19). We would have seen where the public servants started the assessment of the jobs to do the completion certificate.”

He said some contractors have confirmed that officials from the division have visited the job sites to inspect it.

“So we are hoping that within this week or next week, we can see some payments to the contractors.”

He said the chamber held several meeting with the THA after Chief Secretary Farley Augustine put together an independent team in 2023 to manage the payment of contractors.

Augustine had alleged there were "troubling signs" identified in a preliminary report in the audit of several THA programmes, including road resurfacing, done under the previous PNM administration prior to the 2021 THA elections. Among the allegations were: full payments for no work, unsigned contracts, and inflated costs for road repairs. Augustine said the THA needed to do its due diligence before any payment was made to contractors.

Cruickshank said, “In the reality, some contractors are literally on the verge of foreclosure from the court. The court staff has indicated that they have judgments in hand against some contractors because suppliers are not willing to wait any more.

“So we did indicate to the THA that it has reached crisis stage with a number of these contractors and suppliers and downstream people who are sub-contractors of the main contractors. It is a bad situation at this point in time.”

He added: “So I just want to let the bankers, the lawyers, the suppliers – people who are owed by contractors and other contracting companies on the island – that some sort of relief would be made within a week or so.”

He said no list was given as to which contractors will be paid nor the amounts.

He said in 2021, the previous administration gave out approximately $300 million worth of contracts to local contractors. He said the administration changed and an audit was initiated.

“I can tell you, in two years, two months and 15 days since the assembly has been in office, this chamber Tobago division has been fighting tooth and nail to get some sort of payments to the contractors and the suppliers on the island. What it has done, it has literally halted a number of businesses on the island, and it has put a number of our members close to bankruptcy situation.”

At a THA plenary sitting in January 2022, Augustine as chief secretary revealed he had ordered audits into five initiatives managed under the former PNM-led administration during the period October 2019-November 2021, three months before the January 2021 THA election.

The projects were the emergency restoration works programme; the road restoration programme; the road resurfacing programme; the emergency infrastructure rehabilitation project and the agricultural access roads programme. On that occasion, he said a specialised forensic audit firm had been identified, evaluated and selected to conduct the audits into the programmes.