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Ramjattan denies a personal interest in Specialty Hospital
“There is absolutely no truth about pecuniary interest,” said Leader of the Alliance for Change (AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan, as he sought to clear the air about his association with the Indian Company which was denied the contract to build the controversial Specialty Hospital.
Ramjattan, responding to claims by Government officials that he had engineered the cut to the budgetary allocation to the project because of personal interest, sought to emphatically debunk all such allegations.
AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan
“I have never collected one cent from them and I don’t think I ever will…So this talk about there being a personal interest is absolute nonsense.”
Ramjattan disclosed that he had never had an interest in the company until its officials solicited his legal support.
He explained recently to a gathering of media operatives at the Middle Street, Georgetown, Side Walk Cafe, that it was based on the advice of the Indian High Commission that the company, Fedders Lloyd Limited of India, after being denied the contract sought his assistance.
“They indicated that they went to the Indian High Commission to ask where they could get some parliamentarian or somebody of capable of standing to help them on this issue and I was told that they were referred to me as one of the anti-corruption advocates. That is why they came to me,” informed the AFC Leader.
But in order to legally represent the company, Ramjattan said that he indicated to its officials that he needed to see what they had tendered which required that he peruse the tender document that they had submitted to the procurement body.
It was at this point, he said, that he not only learnt that Fedders Lloyd’s price was lower than Surendra Engineering Corporation’s, the company which was awarded the contract to build the Specialty Hospital.
Surendra Engineering, according to Ramjattan, had bid about more than US$100 million more than Fedders Lloyd. “Fedders Lloyd had put in what is called a discounted price which was the final price. Also, Surendra did not post the bond. You have to lodge a bond from some local bank and (Surendra) did not satisfy that very important requirement. All of that was overlooked by the Ministry of Health,” said Ramjattan.
Another matter of concern, he said, was that while Fedders Lloyd had constructed some 40 specialty hospitals across the world, Surendra Engineering, a spare parts fabricator for the sugar mills of India, had never constructed any specialty hospitals.
Moreover, the AFC Leader said that he had made moves to get in contact with a parliamentarian from India who had indicated that he, together with Fedders Lloyd, were seeking to find out how such a contract could be awarded to Surendra Engineering.
It was after these revelations, Ramjattan said, that he began extensively airing his concerns in the local media with a view to emphasising that the contract for the local specialty hospital was badly awarded.
“I indicated that we have got to be careful because we are going to spend $18 million, again a loan from the Indian Government, so it will be on our future generation.”
According to him it was because the parliamentary opposition became aware that the speciality hospital was being built by a company that lacked the necessary experience and at an expensive price “that we decided that we had to do the correct thing…we decided we had to amend, as we did, and make the necessary alteration.”
Moreover, the parliamentary opposition during the considerations of the estimates decided to reduce to $0 the total allocation of $1.25 billion that was budgeted in the 2013 National budget for the construction of the Specialty Hospital.
AFC Vice Chairman, Moses Nagamootoo, said that the opposing move was also triggered by the fact that Government had been unable to account for monies that has been earlier awarded to the project.
He explained that in 2012 a sum of $150 million was voted for the project but “today that has now gone away. I have not seen it reappear in the estimates and I asked the question what happened to that money…”
According to Nagamootoo Government has not been able to show anything, in terms of actual works, for the money that it had secured through Parliament. “Why should we approve a sum of money to build a hospital when the money they have to prepare the site cannot be accounted for?”
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