Minister orders audit of $60 million project

The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Do­minic Smith, is warn­ing the Op­po­si­tion that an in­de­pen­dent au­dit has been or­dered in­to what he de­scribed as a ques­tion­able project un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion that was set to cost tax­pay­ers over USD 60 mil­lion.

Speak­ing late on Fri­day evening as the Sen­ate de­bat­ed the Fi­nance Bill 2025, Smith said he un­cov­ered a list of ex­pen­di­ture items that caused him great con­cern.

“One par­tic­u­lar project, Mr Pres­i­dent, was par­celled nice and neat as an up­grade un­der the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. I am told, Mr Pres­i­dent, that this project has been run­ning for over 24 years,” he told the Up­per House.

Smith con­tin­ued, “I am told that over the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, there was an up­grade. And that up­grade, Mr Pres­i­dent, would you be­lieve, would cost the tax­pay­ers over 60 mil­lion US dol­lars, Mr Pres­i­dent? Mr Pres­i­dent, I want you to jux­ta­pose that against the en­vi­ron­ment where forex is ap­par­ent­ly scarce.”

The rev­e­la­tion of the fi­nan­cial fig­ure drew nois­es of shock from his gov­ern­ment col­leagues.

Smith said he was flab­ber­gast­ed that the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion would en­gage in a project of this size and quan­tum.

“And when we dug fur­ther, Mr Pres­i­dent, would you be­lieve that this 60-plus-mil­lion US dol­lars was meant to be spent over a four-year pe­ri­od to end in 2026?” he added.

The Min­is­ter said in ad­di­tion to the hefty for­eign ex­change bill, the state faced a fur­ther in­voice.

“The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion had be­gun and ini­ti­at­ed with a ven­dor, would you be­lieve that in ad­di­tion to that, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go were al­so meant to pay 50 mil­lion TT dol­lars to op­er­a­tionalise?”

Smith said any gov­ern­ment that en­gages in such busi­ness does not tru­ly care about the wel­fare of its cit­i­zens.

He warned that this would be thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“All I can say is that an au­dit is com­ing, and that au­dit, in­de­pen­dent of me and this gov­ern­ment, will re­veal all. All will be re­vealed, Mr Pres­i­dent, not by us, but by an in­de­pen­dent au­dit. And then, maybe col­leagues on the oth­er side will be sat­is­fied, be­cause they weren’t sat­is­fied enough pil­lag­ing the Trea­sury,” Smith de­clared.

A mem­ber of the Sen­ate on the op­po­site bench asked for fur­ther clar­i­ty on the project in ques­tion, but Min­is­ter Smith told them to di­rect those queries to for­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact West but was un­suc­cess­ful. Like­wise, at­tempts to reach Min­is­ter Smith for fur­ther de­tails were un­suc­cess­ful.

To­wards the end of his con­tri­bu­tion, Smith was chal­lenged by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­sirée Mur­ray for “im­put­ing im­prop­er mo­tives”. Pri­or to this, Smith was chal­lenged twice by the same sen­a­tor for rel­e­vance dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion.

In this in­stance, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark did not agree with Mur­ray’s ob­jec­tion.

“You see, im­put­ing im­prop­er mo­tives must be re­lat­ed to a mem­ber, a sit­ting mem­ber of the Sen­ate. If you are not a sit­ting mem­ber of the Sen­ate, you can speak to that is­sue, but you take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what you have said. So, when you talk about im­put­ing im­prop­er mo­tive, it must be ei­ther con­cern­ing a mem­ber of this cham­ber or a mem­ber of the oth­er cham­ber. Oth­er than that, you have ab­solute free­dom of speech in this House,” Mark ruled.

Smith, how­ev­er, said, “Mr Pres­i­dent, I must say, in the time that I’ve spent in this good Sen­ate, I’ve nev­er once had an in­de­pen­dent bencher in­ter­rupt so many times.”

Mark swift­ly stepped in to Mur­ray’s de­fence.

“Lis­ten, let us not go there. Any mem­ber, whether you are an op­po­si­tion mem­ber or an in­de­pen­dent mem­ber, has a right to in­voke stand­ing or­ders. So, let us not get in­volved in that kind of be­hav­iour. Please, every­one is en­ti­tled, in­clud­ing your good self, to raise a point of or­der. You do not iden­ti­fy a point of or­der by whether you are an op­po­si­tion mem­ber, an in­de­pen­dent mem­ber, or a gov­ern­ment mem­ber. So, don’t go there.”