PRIME MINISTER Dr Keith Rowley yesterday dismissed the claim by Opposition MP Dr Roodal Moonilal that there was a $38 million cost overrun in the “refurbishment” of the Prime Minister’s official residence in Tobago.
Speaking at a news conference on Sunday, Moonilal stated that the cost of the Prime Minister’s official Tobago residence “is now in the vicinity of $63 million”. He claimed that the original estimate had been $25 million.
In an interview with the Express yesterday, the Prime Minister, however, said he had no idea where Moonilal “plucked” these figures from. He said he asked UDeCOTT to provide him with details of the cost of the construction of the official residence, which had been “left to rot” during the UNC’s tenure of office and had been uninhabitable when the PNM assumed office in 2015.
A UDeCOTT document revealed that the construction of the Prime Minister’s residence in Blenheim Road, Tobago, originally had a budget of $22 million and that additional requirements, namely security measures, were identified and resulted in a variation in the sum of $8.1 million. It said UDeCOTT engaged an independent quantity surveyor to assess the further works which were then valued in the amount of $8.6 million. “As a result of the variations, the construction cost was revised to $37.1 million”, the UDeCOTT document said..
The Prime Minister denounced what he described as the latest attempt by Moonilal to incite the public with respect to this project. He noted that when this construction project first appeared as a line item in the 2018 budget, the UNC immediately objected to the building of an official residence in Tobago. This, notwithstanding the fact that Tobago always had residences for the Head of State and the Head of Government.
Rowley stressed that since taking possession of the residence in December 2019, there has been absolutely no renovation. “So when Moonilal comes out and says we have a renovation project in Tobago, for X and Y million, he is deliberately doing what he always does, which is lie and mislead so as to incite people. The building was handed over in late 2019 and in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, I went to Tobago frequently and I always occupied my private residence in Mason Hall during that time. These visits to Tobago did not cost the taxpayers one cent, except for one night when the Cabinet met at the Magdalena Grand when the Prime Minister and the rest of the Cabinet stayed overnight at the hotel. The records would show that as Prime Minister I have only cost the country one night of hotel use with respect to accommodation in Tobago. Other than that I used my private residence and subsequently I have been using the official residence in Tobago since December 2019,” he said..
“So for Moonilal to be quoting sums of money to suggest that we are being extravagant with public funds and that we could have been used the monies spent on the residence to do X, Y and Z, I don’t know since when the UNC is concerned about public money that could have been used for other valuable purposes. Because they didn’t have that concern when they were in office. The millions they spent at the Coco Reef, I don’t know that they (the UNC) thought then that it could have been used for health, and medicine, etc.”
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