Rowley at JCC seminar

Making introductory remarks at the event, Victor Hart, chair of the Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative said successive government assisted in “emasculating” the sector, essentially crippling its ability to help the country in difficult times such as these .

“The process began in the late 1970’s when the government stopped producing 5 year plans that were used by companies then to plan for upcoming projects because they knew what projects were in the pipeline. Today, we can’t even be sure what projects we’ll be likely to plan for in 2017, let alone 2018 and beyond,” said Hart. He told the audience that government to government arrangements, as introduced by Dr .

Eric Williams in 1979, sidelined the local construction firms .

“That decision saw French designers and contractors being welcomed to TT.” Hart lamented that today, the situation was the same as he reeled off a list of foreign countries who have come and gone, benefittng from large government contracts .

“In welcoming those foreign companies to T&T, successive government’s have ignored the pleas of sector’s plea to one, ensure that there was transfer of technology to locals, two, to insist that they register with global organisations before being able to work in T&T and three, make those companies take out bonds so that they do not leave our shores owing money to local consultants, contractors and suppliers.” He also said the sector remained largely unregulated with foreigners continuing to be favoured at the expense of locals with regard to payment .

These are old complaints, a fact acknowledged both by representatives of the JCC and the Prime Minister, who told the contractors that there were two sides to the story and that it was reasonable for government to search outside, if they believed locals either could not deliver a project by a particular time, or did not have the skill to do so .

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