I was not responsible for remitting NIS and taxes

A SUB-CONTRACTOR responsible for labour on the Landate project site said on Thursday that while  it was his duty to pay the labourers, he was not responsible for remitting their National Insurance (NIS) and tax contributions to the relevant agencies. Giving evidence before the Commission of Inquiry at Winsure Building, Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain, construction manager Simon Ragbir said he received a lumpsum bank draft from his employer, from which he paid the labourers and himself.  He said he did not know whose responsibility it was to make the necessary deductions because his administrative duties ended at keeping records of employees and timesheets.  Payment of salaries was approved by NHIC’s Quantity Surveyor Mark Evans Hood, Ragbir said.

Ragbir said he received a “small” fortnightly salary of $4,000, a car allowance of $1,500, and he stayed in an apartment owned by Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley. According to Ragbir, when he began working on the project, he thought it was as an NH International (Caribbean) Ltd employee. In late November, he said, he got a sub-contract to source labour for the project.  Although he had a “labour only contract,” however, he said he performed other duties. Ragbir said the Landate office was housed at the Scarborough Hospital site because there were no office facilities at Landate. When material was needed for the project, Ragbir said, he would inform the relevant persons from the hospital site, who in turn would order and make arrangements for the material to be shipped to Tobago from Trinidad. 

When the material got to Tobago, he said, it was kept at the hospital site and delivered to Landate the next day. Regarding the issue of equipment being moved from the hospital site to work on the Landate project, Ragbir said only on one occasion was a D6 tractor borrowed from the hospital site while he was employed at Landate. The tractor was returned one week later, he said. Ragbir insisted that at no time during his tenure at Landate were labourers taken from the hospital site to work at Mason Hall. 

“I sourced labour from the village,” Ragbir maintained. The construction manager said Rowley visited the site occasionally, adding that the minister never gave him any instructions relative to the movement of material, equipment and labour from the hospital site to Landate. The commission, chaired by retired judge Annestine Sealey, is hearing evidence in the inquiry into allegations of impropriety by Rowley as it relates to the construction of the Scarborough Hospital, and the award of State contracts to NHIC and Warner Construction. Dr Chandrabhan Sharma and Eustace Hobson sit on the commission with Sealey. Hearing resumes on August 2.