Haunted by airport reconstruction woes

FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert surprisingly made time last week, not once, but twice to address claims by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar about cost overruns on the construction works underway at the ANR Robinson International Airport.

The Opposition Leader’s claim of a $462 million increase in the cost of the project hasn’t been clarified as anything beyond political overreach, but Mr Imbert rightly saw the matter as important enough to follow up his statements at December 5’s post-Cabinet press briefing with a second briefing at his ministry on December 6.

The Finance Minister leaned on documents by international programme managers GleedsTT and Mott McDonald, as well as local consulting engineers Arun Buch and KS&P, to explain the cost variations on the agreed on airport design, which incurred additional fees by the contractor, China Railway Construction Company.

These include covid-related logistical delays and mobilisation challenges that resulted after local landowners failed to quit their properties, which have been settled to the tune of US$14.4 million, leaving a balance of US$2.5 million in the contingency fund allocated for the project.

A total of US$128.7 million was budgeted for the original construction project, inclusive of provisional and contingency payments.

At the December 6 briefing, Mr Imbert revealed that the government would be allocating an additional US$5 million for unforeseen costs to the project.

Some overruns were attributed to construction adjustments suggested by Arun Buch to improve the building’s capacity to handle wind shear.

Mr Imbert seemed driven to pat down any association with the words, “airport scandal,” a term with a tainted, three-decade long history.

It wasn’t until April 2023 that the first legal verdict was delivered in the four cases seeking redress for price fixing and bid rigging claims arising from the expansion and refurbishment of the Piarco International Airport.

A jury in Miami Florida found former government minister Brian Kuei Tung, insurance executive Steve Ferguson, and co-conspirator Raul Gutierrez Jr guilty of fraud.

When the case began 20 years ago, there were 56 defendants, but plea deals and deaths whittled the number down to three. Mr Gutierrez pled guilty to conspiracy in the matter in 2006.

After the Opposition Leader’s accusation, the Finance Minister should have been able to rely on accurate and current information from his technocrats on the status of the project.

Instead, he seemed to be flailing in his explanations, accusing the media of “inaccurate arithmetic” and unable to bring fiscal clarity about the cost of the project to date and its expected cost on completion.

The Tobago airport project is a matter of national concern and reporting on its progress and the challenges associated with completion should have been articulated more frequently, with transparency and clarity.

Instead, Mr Imbert found himself chasing Mrs Persad-Bissessar’s accusations, trying to bring clarity to waters that should never have been muddied.