Twelve ambulances, $17 million, and a regulator still investigating

In July 2023 the Tobago Regional Health Authority awarded Tender No PMT01-2022, for the supply and delivery of twelve ambulances, to Biomedical Technologies Limited for a little over $5.5 million. The specification was reported to be Isuzu vehicles, chosen for Tobago's hills. The first batch arrived fifteen months later. They were Force Traveller vans, and the reported bill had passed $17 million.[1][2]

In late May 2025 I wrote to the Authority's Chief Executive Officer, Dr Delmon Baker, and published the letter. The Secretary of Health, Wellness and Social Protection, Dr Faith Brebnor, had told a plenary sitting of the Assembly that the TRHA went ahead with the purchase without approval from the Executive Council. I asked whether the contracts had been split to fall below the $1 million oversight threshold, whether any competitive tender was held for what was eventually delivered, and who approved the supplier.[3]

Within days the Innovative Democratic Alliance called for the Integrity Commission and the Fraud Squad to investigate and for an audit of TRHA contracts back to 2021. The Minority Leader, Kelvon Morris, called it “ambulance-gate” and put numbers on it: $1.295 million a unit, plus $244,000 each to retrofit, for a van he said sold for about $232,000. One of the new ambulances, on a patient transfer from Scarborough General Hospital to Roxborough, could not climb the John Dial hill.[2]

The Authority's answer

Dr Baker responded publicly on 6 June 2025, at a media conference at Roxborough Hospital. The failures, he said, were “teething challenges” with the vehicles' engine management and fuel. The Authority's chairman, Chrislyn Moore, said the supplier was working on the problems, the warranty had been extended, and the TRHA's “legal recourse is sound”. The Authority said it had opened its own investigation.[4]

None of that addressed the questions of procedure: how a $5.5 million award for one vehicle became a $17 million purchase of another, and under what approval.

The Regulator steps in

In November 2025 the Office of Procurement Regulation agreed to a request from Mr Morris to investigate, and appointed three officers. By then, Mr Morris said, not one of the twelve ambulances was in service.[5] No finding has been published.

The same Regulator's annual report, laid on 11 September 2026, shows how little of the system it can see. In no quarter of FY2024/2025 did more than 63.8 per cent of public bodies file the returns the law requires, and roughly a third of reported awards carried no reference to a planned procurement schedule.[6][7]

The questions I put to Dr Baker in May 2025 — whether the contracts were split, whether any tender was held for what was delivered, and who approved the supplier — have never been answered on the record. The Regulator's investigation, opened at Mr Morris's request, has produced no published finding. Until it does, this file stays open.