TTT Live Online MTS Says State Agencies Owe More Than $850 Million

Over $850 million is owed to the National Maintenance Training and Security (NMTS) Company Limited by State agencies.

Speaking at the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on State Enterprises on Monday, NMTS Interim Chief Executive Officer Brian Bachan said this was the result of a lack of collections to settle invoices, and as a result, NMTS owes a substantial sum to contractors.

Mr. Bachan described this as a long-standing issue.

“Well, what I can say accounted for it is that there has been a shortfall in the collections of what we have invoiced. And this shortfall would be approximately how much annually so we could extrapolate how long this problem has existed for. And I would pass it on to the team, but I’m looking at the last JSC hearing. It was around 650, and it’s about 850 today. That’s 200 million over the last 4 years.”

Mr. Bachan said among the State entities that owe the company are the Ministry of Education, $450 million, the Judiciary, $180 million, the Sport Company of Trinidad and Tobago, $30 million, the Board of Inland Revenue, and the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, $25 million each.

Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Public Utilities, Neela Ram Atwaroo, noted that discussions have been initiated with some State agencies.

“We have been meeting particularly with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance**,** given that the payables are largely from the Ministry of Education. One of the areas we are working on is the reconciliation of the invoices. What we found is that sometimes what MTS say the invoices are, it’s different to what the Ministry of Education would confirm.”

Ms. Ram Atwaroo noted that this is an ongoing process.

“While we try to meet the commitments for the monthly payments, we have gotten the assurance from the Ministry of Finance that there would be an additional allocation to treat with the arrears. What we’ve also agreed on is that the issue at hand will not be solved immediately, it will be over a period of time.”

She said this will enable a gradual reduction of arrears.

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