Although much less recovery work was done on Grand Bahama than on Abaco, following Hurricane Dorian in 2019, much more money was being paid out for the work on Grand Bahama, Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA) Executive Chairman Alex Storr said yesterday, adding that the company in question was receiving as much as $1 million a month
Although much less recovery work was done on Grand Bahama than on Abaco, following Hurricane Dorian in 2019, much more money was being paid out for the work on Grand Bahama, Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA) Executive Chairman Alex Storr said yesterday, adding that the company in question was receiving as much as $1 million a month.
“… The debris seems to have simply been dumped on a vacant lot. There was no type of sorting. On Abaco, there is at least some type of sorting. Even at the worst sites, I can see that some attempts were being made to sort,” said Storr, who visited Abaco and Grand Bahama in recent days to assess the work that was done after the cataclysmic Category 5 storm.
“In Grand Bahama, it seems that it was simply dumped and not sorted. Actually, the two sites I visited were under the same company. So, one company has been receiving as much as $1 million per month.”
He said, “I have seen bills of $400,000 and some as high as $500,000 a month (at each of the two sites), whereas, on Abaco, the highest I have seen was 300,000-some-odd dollars on one site and $160,000, $180,000 on another site.
“It leaves me to wonder why the cost in Grand Bahama is some two to three times more than in Abaco, but I can see that even less work was done in Grand Bahama.”
Storr said the work on Grand Bahama was “severely overvalued”.
“Let me give you this example. There are two sites on Abaco which are ran by two separate companies,” he said.
“We have the one company that we spoke about that was billing at $300,000. We have another company on Abaco that was billing from $150,000 to $180,000 even though their site is bigger.
“With their reporting, they are providing me pictures, they are providing me the loads. They are providing the license plate numbers for trucks that come in and I can go online to their Share Drive and I can pick any day and I can see pictures of the trucks and the loads that came in.
“With these other two, no such reporting was done. There was no such reporting provided and this company is charging less than both of these companies.”
Storr said an executive at the DRA was sent on administrative leave as questions continue to rise about contracts issued under the previous administration.
Defense
The Nassau Guardian spoke yesterday with Ed Curling, principal of Tycoon Waste Management Company, which was contracted by the DRA to carry out recovery work on Grand Bahama after Dorian.
Curling managed the debris management sites in McClean’s Town and High Rock. His company also cleaned up Pelican Point.
Asked whether Tycoon had been receiving $1 million a month from the DRA, he said, “No. I can put my books on top of the table. It won’t make a difference to me. I kept good books. I paid everyone that I had hired.
“The Grand Bahamians were out of homes in the east end of Grand Bahama, out of homes, out of everything. I hired as many of them as I could have possibly hired. And, very little money I walked out of there with.”
He added, “I can let someone lay my books on the table of Parliament. I know that I worked for whatever money I received…”
Curling said while he was initially engaged by the Ministry of Works and the Department of Environmental Health in the immediate aftermath of the storm, his company was contracted by the DRA in February 2020 after a bidding process.
A letter sent to him by DRA Project Director Wendall Grant on September 30, 2020, advised of a notice of closure of the active debris management sites. His work came to an end. He was asked to send in his billing as soon as practical.
Asked whether the DRA got value for money from his company, he said, “Yes. I can tell you this because if they had gotten an outsider to clean up Grand Bahama and Abaco, it would have cost pretty near $100 million.”
Speaking of Tycoon’s work yesterday, Storr said, “The fact of the matter is we visited the site. The debris has obviously not been sorted or reduced, though Tycoon was paid to do so. You can see the debris in individual piles exactly how it was dumped.”
But Curling insisted that his company did sort and live up to the terms of its contract with the DRA.
Earlier this week, Storr also raised concerns about the post-Dorian recovery contract held by Sunrise Sanitation and Disposal, a company owned by former Free National Movement (FNM) senator Heather Hunt, and her husband, who manage the Treasure Cay, Abaco, debris management site.
Storr said that company was granted a contract with payments ranging between $150,000 and $320,000 monthly.
Hunt said on Tuesday, “We are performing our duties as per the terms of our contract and we are not prepared to discuss this in a public forum but can confirm that, to date, we’ve had no formal complaint from the Disaster Reconstruction Authority with respect to services rendered.”
Storr said an audit of the DRA’s accounts is ongoing. The authority has failed to comply with the law, which mandates that the DRA’s audited accounts be submitted to the minister with responsibility three months after the end of each financial year.
The minister must then lay a copy of the audited accounts in the House of Assembly with a copy of any report made by the auditor on the accounts. The act also requires that all contracts awarded by the authority within a fiscal year be publicly disclosed at the end of the fiscal year.
The DRA has failed to make any contracts public.
Former DRA Chairman John Michael Clarke did not address these issues yesterday. However, he insisted on Tuesday that contracts were awarded above board and that work was being properly monitored as the authority had a proper corporate governance structure.
Following the tender process for each scope of work, bids were meticulously examined by different committees of the authority, including the technical, finance and operations committees, before any contracts were awarded, Clarke explained.
While Storr has said there are instances where contracts were overvalued and the DRA did not get value for money, Clarke suggested otherwise.
Curling yesterday expressed a view shared by Hunt when she spoke with The Nassau Guardian on Tuesday — that they are being singled out because they are FNMs.
“I think they are being unfair by just picking on myself and Heather,” he said.
“Put all of the contractors in one pool and look at it from that angle. Why two people who they believe are prominent FNMs, why pick us two out? What happened to all the PLPs who were in there who had contracts? PLPs and FNMs alike had contracts. It’s like someone is targeting me and Heather.”
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
