The details of the billion-dollar Beetham Wastewater Treatment facility contract are currently being reviewed by the National Gas Company (NGC).
In response to questions by the Sunday Guardian, NGC yesterday said it was “carefully reviewing the agreement and the Beetham Wastewater Reuse Plant project in its entirety.”
The massive contract was the subject of much contention since it was ventilated in the public domain by then opposition leader, now Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, in 2014.
Since then the project, the contract and Super Industrial Services Limited (SISL) have been open to scrutiny over the scope of works expected to be carried out before the plant is handed over to the State.
“Once completed, NGC will engage the contractor and thereafter issue a statement as appropriate,” NGC said. It has been reported that SISL, the preferred contractor under the former People’s Partnership administration, has already been paid as much as 86 per cent of the full cost of the contract at the end of the first quarter of 2015.
It was reported by the Sunday Guardian in July that SISL had received payments despite the job only being 66.1 per cent complete. Calculations then showed that the US$139 million already paid to SISL included a US$107 million paid to the contractor for engineering, procurement and construction and a further US$32.4 million was paid as the 20 per cent mobilisation fee. The secrecy surrounding this $1.6 billion project extended back to September 2014, when the Sunday Guardian posed questions on the award of the contract to two former executives, chairman Roop Chan Chadeesingh and then president Indar Maharaj. Both men referred questions then to dismissed communications manager Charmaine Mohammed. SISL’s silence on this contract has continued, as several attempts to contact the company’s head office proved to be unsuccessful.
Although NGC is now unclear as to whether this multi-billion dollar project has a future, back in July its communication manager, Roger Sant, issued a statement defending both SISL and the project. The Sunday Guardian had then reported that NGC had paid SISL the majority of the contract cost and even paid a multi-million dollar mobilisation fee, external to the contract agreement.
But Sant had said then that the 20 per cent mobilisation fee—US$32.4 million—is expected to be repaid to NGC under the project agreement.
According to the contract, obtained then by the Sunday Guardian, SISL was expected to make the first repayment of the mobilisation fee three months ago. Sant did not say whether that payment schedule was kept and NGC did not say how much that first repayment was or when in August it was expected to be repaid.
Back in July, Sant also defended the monthly payments NGC made to SISL despite the slower pace of construction of the plant. Sant said then said that the NGC was merely honouring the payment schedule as stipulated in the contract agreement and that the contractor had completed 42 per cent of the “construction related activity” by the end of May.
The Sunday Guardian learned that newly-installed NGC chairman Gerry Brooks is spearheading cost-saving measures at NGC, which now includes the review of this multi-billion dollar project.
The chairman’s report for September 2015 recorded a profit of $130.9 million for the end of its fiscal year.