The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis said taxpayer funds were not wasted in Abaco after Hurricane Dorian. Much of the funds, including money for building a hurricane centre, he said, were donations to The Bahamas.

His comments came after Myles Laroda’s mid-term budget speech last week. The state minister, who has responsibility for the Disaster Reconstruction Authority, said hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on the Abaco hurricane centre even though a foundation has yet to be poured.

Mr Laroda also said a former director of the authority acknowledged that up to $14m in money for debris management in Grand Bahama and Abaco was spent “without due diligence”.

Dr Minnis called on Mr Laroda to clarify this by tabling documents in the House of Assembly. He said his administration saved money on debris management.

“I would ask the minister to kindly lay all of that on the table and show us the facts,” Dr Minnis said yesterday. “We can do a breakdown of everything that was spent. I know DRA was always on top of that matter.

“With respect to the clean-up, we would’ve collected in excess of 2.5m cubic yards of debris. We would’ve gotten estimates before as to cleanup. We got estimates from companies, international companies that submitted estimates of up to $90m to clean up, yet we were able to do it for less than $40m which meant we saved the Bahamian taxpayer $50m, so I advise the minister again to check his facts.”

Mr Laroda said a joint venture between a Bahamian and foreign company got the contract to build the hurricane centre. He said attempts had to be made to recover funds after $215k was given to the entity.

Dr Minnis, however, said Mr Laroda misunderstood what happened and that his administration was always satisfied with the performance of the joint venture.

“Approximately $215k would have been issued to the partner of the Bahamian company, but we were always involved at every step of the way,” he said.

“When they submitted their bill, we would question it to ensure that it was in compliance with the spending permitted by the private donors. That’s all that was. The American company may have wanted to include travel expenses in their bill to us, but we would’ve had arguments saying no, travel expenses and other such things were not to be included in that component of the bill. It was just a matter of us doing due diligence and checking to ensure that the expenses remained compliant with the expectations of donors.”

Mr Laroda said the hurricane centre, originally set to cost $1.8m, now costs $2.7m. He said $900k has been spent to date though no “foundation has been poured”.

Dr Minnis said the cost increased after workers found “caverns and cavities”.

“We had a design-build approach,” Dr Minnis said. “We went out to RFP. A Bahamian company won the RFP in conjunction with the American company. What we discovered when we started work on this site were multiple caverns and cavities. That in itself cost about $185k in preparation and if they would do their work they would discover that there are a lot of challenges of similar nature in the Central Pines area and we also had such challenges along the airport area also in terms of cavities and caverns.”

Dr Minnis stressed that taxpayer funds were not used.

“No money was government money,” he said. “All money was raised from donors and we had to account to the donors to ensure that their monies were well spent. The Indian government donated $1m and they were ensuring that their monies were well spent and monitored and that what we had promised to do were done. So there were checks and balances along the way. You had various Bahamian entities as well who donated monies, I don’t want to call their names.”

He added: “Not one red cent was government yet all the professionals on the design-build were Bahamians, the engineers, the architects, etc. And you must take into consideration that, yes, the original cost was $1.2m, but in preparation of the land, the cost would have gone up because of the cavities and caverns.

“Everything can be accounted for so I would advise the minister to please check his facts before he goes and blabbers his mouth.”