Government yesterday rejected allegations by sacked contractor ProActive Management Systems that civil servants sabotaged the senior secondary school project.

"The Government believes that the workings of the Ministry of Works, Engineering and Housing and the professional behaviour of its technical officers can withstand scrutiny in any enquiry that may be called on the project," Works Minister Ashfield DeVent is quoted as saying in a Government Press statement.

The statement went on to say that Government would gladly publicise all the facts about ProActive's performance on the project, should the company wish it to, and that Government had the documentation to show that it was "completely fair in our dealings with ProActive".

The statement disputes ProActive's claims that Government had not provided adequate support.

Government had modified the contract early on to provide "well over" $500,000 at the start of the project, had instituted bi-weekly payments and paid some subcontractors directly ? all to help ProActive with their cash flow problems, the statement continues.

"There were times that payments were even made on a weekly basis.

"Technical officers of the Ministry helped expedite all payments to ProActive in a most timely manner despite the increased administrative burden that such concessions placed on them."

Government had also ordered major items directly from overseas suppliers but "to this day there are containers that have been sitting on the docks in Bermuda for several weeks, waiting to be cleared and delivered to the site by ProActive".

And the February agreement to settle claims by ProActive extended the contract by 391days despite the fact that the contractor had only asked for 274 days, according to the statement.

Government is also arguing that a risk assessment report by independent consultant Cunningham Lindsey was one sided, based on a cursory site inspection and on what the contractor told them.

It says it was unaware that Cunningham Lindsey had visited the site and "had they contacted our full-time staff on the site, they could have been shown our areas of concern, including the fact that facility is still not watertight and there is damage to several items of installed work, and the quality of the work was deteriorating rapidly".

Cunningham Lindsey had been commissioned by Argus Insurance which had provided some $80 million in insurance coverage for the building.

Argus eventually decided to renew its cover.

The report, which was summarised in yesterday's , gave the contractor high marks for its management of the project, the quality of the work done, and said that much of the delay appeared to be as a result of mistakes made by a Canadian architectural firm and work order changes required by the Ministry.

"The facts show otherwise and can be proven otherwise," the statement says. "Since these issues will probably be brought up at a future arbitration and or litigation the Ministry of Works, Engineering and Housing will refrain from commenting on the specifics."

And the contractor had not maintained a maximum workforce of 140 for more than a year and had been around half that number since the February agreement, according to the statement.

And it repeated earlier statements that its immediate goals were to resume work on the site as soon as possible and "to help some of the ProActive workers find interim re-employment in other current government sites, or at the Senior Secondary School site, once work resumes."

The statement was accompanied by a series of photographs which it said was part of Government's "extensive documentation of the unacceptable condition of work there that resulted in Government's decision to cancel" the contract.

The pictures show flooding and water damage in sections of the building but Government could not say when exactly they were taken ? only that they were "recent" photographs that helped it make the decision to cancel the contract.

Then-Works Minister Alex Scott reported in March 2003 that Government's consultant, the HR Lubben Group, had concluded that ProActive had administrative deficiencies but that the quality of the work was good.

"We are not going to get into a slug-fest with Government. It is obvious that the Cunningham Lindsey report has stunned them," said a ProActive spokesperson.

"It is just unfortunate that Government now wants to spin this into a full scale assault on ProActive's performance and competence. We have the documented history for our position and we will simply not fight this issue in the media, we will fight it in arbitration which we are entitled to do. You can't win damages through the newspapers."

Asked whether the company would mind if Government released all the information on the project, the spokesperson said that particular challenge was a ploy to make it look like there was a "smoking gun" that would thoroughly discredit the company.

"If Government wants to release all the documentation, they can but Government does not have all the documentation. They were nowhere near as hands-on as they should have been."

But he repeated ProActive's position that there should be a public inquiry.