Commission hears how Ganga Singh allegedly paid for documents

Giving evidence before the Commission of Inquiry into the allegations against Rowley and the award of State contracts to NH International (Caribbean) Ltd (NHIC), NHIC’s senior construction manager, Roy Malchina, yesterday said he was told that Opposition Chief Whip Ganga Singh had "run the money" to have the documents stolen.

Malchina said he got that information from Barrington "Skippy" Thomas.

According to Malchina, Thomas visited the work site at the Scarborough Hospital project occasionally, looking for jobs. He said Thomas used to just walk onto the compound because he was a "Tobago boy" and he had become friendly with the security guards. When Singh "bus the mark in Parliament," Malchina said, he received a phone call from Thomas. Malchina said he told Thomas that the police were looking for him and his accomplice, Peter Hosein, because they were rumoured to have stolen "the people’s documents."

Malchina said Thomas then told him, "I pay for that. Ganga Singh paid me to steal the documents, and I gave Peter $500."

Malchina could not say if the stolen documents were the same ones that Singh had used in support of his allegations in Parliament, or the ones that were now before the commission.

When asked why Thomas would call him and confide in him with such privileged information if they were not "friends," Malchina said Thomas had called at the site and he (Malchina) just happened to answer the phone.

The construction manager said after the phone conversation with Thomas, he (Malchina) told his colleague David Seemungul about it. Regarding his duties at the hospital work site, Malchina said he was responsible for ensuring a productive workforce. He said he had gone to the Landate site three times — once to drop off workers, the second time he accompanied a sub-contractor, and the last time he just drove past one Sunday to see how the project was going.

Malchina said materials for both projects came from Trinidad on the boat and were taken to the hospital site. A record was kept of what materials were sent to the Landate site, he said.

NHIC was the contractor for both projects.

Another witness, NHIC’s quality surveyor, Kamal Osmond Mohammed, said it was not unusual for materials for multiple projects to be stored at one worksite. It was economical and all large contracting companies did it, he said.

According to Mohammed, when the materials for both projects arrived at the Scarborough port, usually at around 9 or 10 pm, the truckers would have to offload the materials as quickly as possible to catch the return trip to Trinidad at 11 pm. As a result, it saved time to offload all the material at the hospital site.

He said whenever material was needed for the Landate project, sub-contractor Simon Ragbir would make a request and if what he wanted was available, it would be transported along with a transfer slip.