The Tribune

FORMER Labour and National Insurance Minister Shane Gibson ordered that payments to contractors hired by the Ministry of Works to clean-up New Providence after Hurricane Matthew be halted last November because he was concerned that their work was not properly accounted for, emails seen by The Tribune show.

Mr Gibson, the former hurricane czar under the previous administration, appeared concerned that payments were made to people who did not have a contract specifying the terms and conditions of their service.

He believed the bills that were submitted lacked details of which specific areas contractors had been cleaned up, creating the possibility that duplicate bills were issued by contractors.

"Please don't release or prepare anymore cheques without my express permission, unless it is for payment as per contracts executed by Permanent Secretary Jack Thompson," Mr Gibson wrote to senior civil servants in December. "That includes payments for maintenance of dump sites. A stop order was given for all areas except Centreville."

Among the contractors who were supposed to be affected by the stop order was Johnathan Ash, the businessman at the centre of a controversy Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis revealed in Parliament last week. However, Mr Ash was supposed to only be partly affected since he was also engaged for work in Centreville, which was not covered by the stop order.

Dr Minnis said Mr Ash was paid more than $8m for the clean-up work he did after Hurricane Matthew, an amount he found shocking.

Emails seen by The Tribune show that the Ministry of Works asked Mr Ash to maintain the three main dump sites in New Providence—at the Sports Centre, at the Carmichael Road and on Bacardi Road park dump site and the Harold Road dump site.

Mr Ash was responsible for separating bulk waste from green waste and his work involved mulching green waste and transporting the bulk waste to the city landfill.

For at least a time, Chief Engineer of the Ministry of Works Leyton Rahman was said to be responsible for certifying both the completion of work by contractors in the wake of the hurricane and the rates of pay for such work. Mr Rahman allegedly certified Mr Ash's work and his rates of pay to the tune of at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to documents seen by The Tribune. The documents bore Mr Rahman’s signature but no official from the Ministry of Works confirmed yesterday if payments to Mr Ash were contingent on such documents.

Mr Rahman declined to speak to this newspaper yesterday, but a source at the ministry said he not only disputes certifying work by Mr Ash that was worth millions of dollars but that he was also shocked to find out how much money Mr Ash received overall.

The source also said that the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Works is alone responsible for authorising payments to vendors.

Nonetheless, after Mr Gibson ordered that payments and work be stopped, Mr Rahman advised that the work at the dump sites should be allowed to continue, emails show.

"I would not advise stopping this work as the work is essential to maintain capacity for receiving waste as well as keeping the household waste separate," he said of the work at the dump sites in one email to Mr Gibson. "I used Ash when I received a call from Melanie McKenzie asking for some heavy equipment to be sent at the main dump to control a fire before it gets out of hand. The nearest contractor was Ash and I instructed him to assist with two D9s and a front loader as a matter of urgency. He did this work well and has been asked to remain in the dump sites. I understand he is also employing over 70 people or so from Centreville."

Despite the initial order to stop payments to contractors, payments for the maintenance of dump sites continued for awhile because Mr Rahman and an official at the Department of Environmental Services believed indiscriminate dumping at the sites posed a fire risk, he said in an email exchange.

Mr Rahman was also concerned that stopping cheques to some contractors would prompt violence and his statements on this suggested he was intimately involved with the process involving the issuance of cheques.

He said in one email that some small contractors were shelling "out funds from their pockets to hire men and trucks."

Threats to kill or have people killed if truckers were not paid were made, he said.

"I know one contractor had intimidated people, waiting at their children's school because they would be killed if some truckers are not paid soon," Mr Rahman said in one email.

Mr Gibson expressed frustration in response.

"We are far past the emergency stage of clean-up and I find it unacceptable that we are maintaining dump sites without contracts when we know that maintenance will last for months," he said.

Before he began to maintain the dump sites, Mr Ash was among the contractors the Ministry of Works engaged to provide clean-up services in the wake of the hurricane.

Although the Ministry of Works is said to keep a list of contractors to be employed when necessary, it remains unclear what specific process resulted in Mr Ash's initial selection.

But after he was selected by the ministry as one of the people to provide clean-up services in New Providence, Mr Ash was later among five contractors former Prime Minister Perry Christie selected to provide clean-up services in Centreville.

Parliamentarians had been invited by Mr Gibson to submit a list of people whose job it would be to provide such services.

Ultimately, it’s unclear who authorised much of the payments that were made to Mr Ash before an official contract was drawn up for him for his work at the dump sites and signed-off by Cabinet.