Top financier of T&T’s People’s Partnership gets huge contract.
By stabroeknews.com.
(Trinidad Express) A top financier of the People’s Partnership administration has been awarded a TT$232.5 million contract by the National Insurance Property Development Company Ltd (Nipdec).
It is not the first contract the Krishna Lalla-owned company, Super Industrial Services (SIS), has received from the People’s Partnership Government.
But it is the most lucrative to date.
On November 27 last year, Nipdec’s company secretary wrote to SIS manager Einool Hosein, informing the company that Nipdec had agreed to award the TT$232,501,329.22 contract to SIS and its Barbados-based precasting partner, Preconco, for the design-build-construction of the Motor Vehicle Authority (MVA) in Frederick Settlement, Caroni.
SIS, the contractor linked to the completion of construction of the homes of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and former minority leader of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Ashworth Jack, was the contractor behind the TT$45 million Siparia Market and the TT$70 million Couva/Preysal Interchange. SIS is to also benefit from Programme for Upgrading Roads Efficiency (PURE) contracts awarded by Nipdec on behalf of the Ministry of Works.
SIS’s construction firm, Casa Contractors Ltd, was responsible for extension works at the Philippine residence of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar last March.
The firm also worked on Jack’s home in Hillsborough, Mt St George, Tobago.
Lalla, the Sunday Express previously reported, had invested in the Tobago Organisation of the People’s (TOP) failed campaign bid to claim control of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) by footing some of the TOP’s bills for its electioneering process.
But informed sources told the Sunday Express that SIS’s proposal for the MVA bore a significant error.
The Sunday Express learned SIS did not commit to a ten per cent contingency fee in its total cost for the project, which was TT$232.5 million. That ten per cent, which works out to be TT$27 million, would have taken the final cost to TT$259 million, which would have made it the most expensive proposal.
At TT$232.5 million, SIS’s price was higher than other contractors such as Beijing Liujian at TT$160 million, Moosai Construction that was priced at TT$193 million, Adams Construction at TT$207 million and Yorke Structures Ltd at TT$208 million, but lower than Kee Chanona at TT$246 million.
The Sunday Express understands Nipdec raised the issue of the contingency fee with SIS but allowed the company to remain in the process and eventually won the contract.