THE “cash register is still running” was the common thread running through most of the presentations yesterday as Gorstew representatives, led by chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, lamented the unfinished state of the Sandals Whitehouse Hotel project two years after its opening.

“The hotel is a long way from being finished,” said Stewart who was on the offensive at his second appearance before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) probing the US$43-million cost overrun on the Westmoreland hotel project.

Stewart warned that the cost overrun could jump substantially higher than the US$43 million figure being quoted since the news broke last year. He was supported by his project representative, Jeremy Brown of Implementation Limited who revealed that the cost to replace defective furniture alone would be at least US$1 million.

Brown, who insisted that “the cash register is still running on the project and the hotel is not yet complete”, noted that there were still outstanding issues having to do with items of furniture, lighting fixtures, incorrect wiring in one instance and a leaking waste water treatment plant. While the costs had not yet been quantified, it would amount to several hundred thousand Jamaican dollars, he said.

Gorstew director, Patrick Lynch added that the latest audited accounts which should have been produced at an aborted annual general meeting of the Board of Ackendown, were still outstanding, raising the possibility that the project costs had escalated above the US$43 million calculated in the Forensic Audit Report commissioned by the government.

Ackendown is the three-way partnership involving Gorstew, owners of Sandals which manages the hotel; the state-run Urban Development Corporation (UDC), the project managers and the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ), state financiers. Stewart’s Gorstew took the UDC to court for losses Sandals suffered when the late opening of the hotel and faulty furnishings resulted in massive refunds to early guests.

Yesterday, Stewart said if the UDC and contractors Ashtrom Building Systems Limited were not serious about finishing the hotel, it would hurt the people in the Westmoreland area.

“It is going to affect their living. The scandal brought about on this hotel has not helped business and it affects all those people who work for the hotel because they literally get a commission on the business that comes there. I believe that the overruns are not yet finished and I think there are considerable overruns left to come,” the Sandals chairman told the committee.

In responding to questions from Opposition member Clive Mullings as to whether the issues of quality had affected the hotel, Stewart said:

“It has been very, very difficult to run a hotel that was not finished and what was finished was falling apart before it was finished. It is very difficult to run a hotel with the reputation that the Whitehouse Sandals had before opening.”

Much of this could be blamed on the fact that the work site was disorganised and lacked an appropriate tracker system. “It was unbelievable; if you don’t have a tracker system then what you have done is thrown the entire site into confusion because nobody knows what you are buying, nobody knows when it is coming and nobody is able to view the quality of what is being bought,” Stewart complained.

Saying that a number of trailers had arrived on the hotel site without packing lists, he added: “As a business-man, most of us would probably be in jail for bringing in trailers without packing lists… This site and the way it was managed, the lack of information on this site…it was inconceivable for something this big.”

Speaking for the UDC, chief executive officer Marjorie Campbell insisted Ackendown was “not aware of any additional expenditure on this project”, as it had not given permission for additional expenditure to be made on its behalf.

“We have not given any permission to anybody to spend any money on behalf of Ackendown,” Campbell told the PAC.

On the issue of the delivery of furniture to the hotel being outstanding, she said attempts had been made but were being hampered by the hotel’s occupancy levels.

Opposition Member Audley Shaw asked whether Sandals had seen “any evidence of clear open fraud and corruption” in the way the project was managed.

Responding, Gorstew director, Chris Zacca said while he could not go there, he had seen room for deception in the project. He was also unimpressed by complaints from Alston Stewart of Nevalco, who managed the site on behalf of the UDC, that he had been forced to give retroactive approvals for items sanctioned by representatives of Sandals.

Zacca charged that this was a continuation of the deception, arguing that Stewart had in one instance taken a unilateral decision to strike items specified by Sandals from the list of items to be procured.

Yesterday’s PAC meeting ended with interim chairman, Mike Henry indicating that it could be reconvened to tidy up loose ends or if any of the parties felt a necessity for it.

The parliamentary year officially ended yesterday, making way for the start of the new year tomorrow.