The Highway Reroute Movement welcomes the efforts by the Government to provide financial information on the collapsed Pt Fortin Highway system.
However, the entire process, from certification to collapse, must be audited. With respect to Debe to Mon Desir, this audit must cover the period from Environmental Management Authority certification (February 2006-April 2010) to late 2015, the date of the bankruptcy and collapse of the OAS. Any audit must consider, in addition to the matters raised in Parliament, the “Panama Papers” and the following:
• Why the EMA, the CEC decision-makers, ignored relevant information warning against Debe to Mon Desir, by consultants, the Institute of Marine Affairs, residents at public consultations and the EMA’s own scientists.
• Why the apparent rush to certification on April 20, 2010, one month before the May 24, 2010 general elections. The decision-maker had not availed itself of the benefit of an understanding of the hydrology of the affected area, the Oropouche Wetland. It had done no proper social or ecological cost-benefit assessments.
• Why the OAS was chosen over other contractors, globally or locally.
• Why the PP Government ignored the findings of the Inter-American Development Bank, presented to them in mid-2010. The IADB refused to fund this project, stating that the project was over-designed and over-costed; that it had misgivings about the tendering process; that an incremental system of road repair and widening was its feasibility option.
• Why two PP Ministers of Finance failed to intercede and bring transparency and rectification to this project. The first Minister ignored the IDB’s statements presented to him; he also approved financing from recurrent expenditure. The second refused to respond to clear information presented to him in January 2014, demonstrating that the economic rationale, the process and the CEC for this project were flawed.
• Why the PP Prime Minister, after promising to review the Debe to Mon Desir highway, failed to do a proper review. And subsequently, failed to abide by the recommendations of the $1 million Armstrong Report.
• Why the Prime Minister and her cabinet illegally destroyed the HRM’s Debe camp on June 27, 2012, on a site which the corporate owners had given permission to occupy.
• Why the President of NIDCO allegedly sought to have the Armstrong Committee change parts of the Armstrong Report, leading to its delayed publication.
• Why NIDCO failed to compensate residents for property occupied by highway construction.
• Why the apparent arbitrariness in compensation packages offered by NIDCO to different property owners.
• Why the NIDCO President failed to produce a cost-benefit analysis for this project after promising the HRM that he would.
• Why there is apparently no proper cost-benefit for this project.
• Why homes and communities were flooded out at Debe interchange on December 25, 2013, and on July 19, 2015 at Suchit Trace.
• Why aggregate was removed illegally from the Northern Range for the Debe to Mon Desir highway, between October 2013 and February 2014 (Trinidad Express, 31st May 2014).
• Why the project collapsed under the management of the PP Government, AECOM, the OAS, NIDCO, the Ministry of Works, and others.
Governments which continue to violate proper approach and process, will continue to retard development. Will continue to burden the Treasury with cost overruns. Will continue to add significantly to the national debt. Will continue to place the business of partisan and corporate actors above the public interest. The immediate financers of this project, the public and the Treasury, must not be robbed of full exposure, the complete picture, from certification to contract to collapse.
There is no need to re-invent the wheel of audit for the Debe to Mon Desir highway process. The 19 experts and scientists of the Armstrong Report concluded that the CEC for the Debe to Mon Desir highway was flawed, and should have been sent back to the applicants, the Ministry of Works.
That no proper social impact assessment, hydrological study, environment cost-benefit analysis were done. It explicitly stated that no works should proceed until the scientific process was applied. It created a template for the execution of projects, particularly large public projects, requiring significant capital expenditure.
Wayne Kublalsingh,
Highway reroute movement