国际英语资讯:Firestorm over questionable 300 mln USD contract to restore Puerto Rico power_时事

国际英语资讯:Firestorm over questionable 300 mln USD contract to restore Puerto Rico power

"Whitefish sent out an email blast recruiting any and every chump electrician they can find...who knows who is working on the lines down there and even if they are qualified," Hubscher asked.

The Whitefish-PREPA contract revealed that Whitefish is charging 412.23 U.S. dollars a day per electrician for room and board, and 15,450 U.S. dollars an hour for helicopter services.

Hubscher, a Tulane University educated businessman, owns a house in Costa Rica and travels frequently to the Caribbean.

"You're talking about the poorest country imaginable," Hubscher said of Puerto Rico, "The cost to house and feed a person is about 5 dollars a day there, max...so Whitefish is reaping an 800 percent profit per person per day. That's rapacious."

If Whitefish makes 400 U.S. dollars a day profit on each of its 400 workers they are making 160,000 U.S. dollars a day profit, according to Hubscher.

"So the company is fleecing the U.S. taxpayer at least 5 million dollars a month," Hubscher noted, "not to mention 1,000 dollars for each electrician to fly there - another bogus number."

But those numbers will never get Whitefish in trouble thanks to a contract that says no one has "the right to audit or review the cost or profit elements of the labor rates," a clause allowing a "misuse or waste of federal funds," according to Cummings.

"This is as gross as it gets," Richardson said. "And this is what they do (the Trump Administration) after ignoring the crisis on the island following the hurricane? Have they no shame?" he questioned.