Richard Lord

For­mer Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh last night de­nied sex al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against him by a Cen­tral woman, say­ing they were base­less and with­out any mer­it.Ra­mad­hars­ingh was re­spond­ing to an ar­ti­cle in which Pa­tri­cia Singh claimed she had made an of­fi­cial po­lice com­plaint that he forced her per­form sex­u­al acts in or­der to fast track a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion house for her fam­i­ly.

In a brief re­sponse to the ar­ti­cle last night, Ra­mad­hars­ingh "cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and equiv­o­cal­ly" de­nied all al­le­ga­tions made, say­ing the re­port was "mis­lead­ing, base­less and with­out any mer­it what­so­ev­er."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who was sacked as a Cab­i­net min­is­ter last month for al­leged abuse of a Caribbean Air­lines flight at­ten­dant on a trip from To­ba­go to Trinidad, said be­cause of the "grav­i­ty of the mat­ter, and the per­son­al hurt, pain and psy­cho­log­i­cal suf­fer­ing it has brought to me and my fam­i­ly, I have now re­ferred this mat­ter to my le­gal coun­sel/at­tor­neys for their im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion."

He said he had giv­en the le­gal team in­struc­tions "to take all nec­es­sary steps to stop the pub­li­ca­tion of any fur­ther ar­ti­cle, elec­tron­ic, print­ed, or oth­er­wise, which may be in­ju­ri­ous to my rep­u­ta­tion, and in ad­di­tion to re­store my per­son­al and that of my fam­i­ly's iden­ti­ty and rep­u­ta­tion."Sev­er­al of Ra­mad­hars­ingh's col­leagues re­fused com­ment when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

Pen­ny: PM must an­swer

For­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment sen­a­tor and at­tor­ney Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son in­sist­ed last night that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ques­tions to an­swer to the pub­lic in the wake of the al­le­ga­tion against the for­mer min­is­ter.Beck­les-Robin­son said Per­sad-Bisses­sar must tell the na­tion if she was aware of the com­plaint, as al­leged by Singh, since there was al­so the claim that it may have in­flu­enced her fir­ing of Ra­mad­hars­ingh.

"The in­for­ma­tion now com­ing to hand in­di­cates that the Prime Min­is­ter was aware of that com­plaint," Beck­les-Robin­son said, not­ing that Singh al­leged she had in­formed some­one in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, an at­tor­ney, church el­der and a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter of her com­plaint.

She added that such com­plaint may not be sin­gu­lar ei­ther, since oth­er cab­i­net min­is­ters may have such al­le­ga­tions against them. She said she ex­pects "oth­er per­sons will now come for­ward and in­di­cate that they have made com­plaints to her (PM) be­fore as it re­lates to oth­er cab­i­net min­is­ters and she had not act­ed on them."Beck­les-Robin­son said the PM must al­so tell the na­tion if she ini­ti­at­ed any in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the mat­ter, adding she must make a cat­e­gor­i­cal state­ment on the mat­ter.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er al­so said last night that Per­sad-Bisses­sar knew about com­plaints of sex­u­al abuse against one of her col­leagues but failed to act on it.Warn­er said he had al­so told the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion about the sex ex­ploits of a min­is­ter."Six months ago, (but) no­body took me on," Warn­er said.

Warn­er said there was much more to be said, but in­sist­ed that six months ago the PM was made aware of all the al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against one of their col­leagues but failed to act on it.