Yvonne Ba­boolal

The mys­tery sur­round­ing Beetham com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Ken­neth "Span­ish" Ro­driguez has deep­ened, as Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John has dis­missed his role as ei­ther a con­trac­tor or sub-con­trac­tor on a state project.Ro­driguez has said he is the main man on the Gov­ern­ment's po­lice post project on Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain.But John said yes­ter­day, "What he is do­ing there is any­body's guess. He was nev­er giv­en an HDC con­tract to con­struct a po­lice post. He is not a sub-con­trac­tor ei­ther.

"Of course, a con­trac­tor can hire a sub-con­trac­tor. I did ask and I was told he was not."John said she did not even know if Ro­driguez was a work­er on the project and he was not at­tached to the HDC in any of­fi­cial way. She said the con­tract was giv­en to FIQH Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors, which had been work­ing with the HDC for the last sev­en years, which she said was well pub­li­cised.

Asked if the con­trac­tors had con­tact­ed her to find out what was go­ing on, she said, "No, they know they are the con­trac­tors."The T&T Guardian tried to get a com­ment from FIQH, which is based in Ch­agua­nas, but the re­sponse was, "Uh uh. No way."John said some 60 peo­ple, in­clud­ing res­i­dents of Dun­can Street, Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain West, Co­corite and Ch­agua­nas, are em­ployed on the project.

Ro­driguez fea­tured promi­nent­ly dur­ing a tour of the $2 mil­lion Dun­can Street po­lice post project with John, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams last week Fri­day.

Ro­driguez told the me­dia then that he was the con­trac­tor for the project. He met and greet­ed Mooni­lal, then the act­ing prime min­is­ter, John and her en­tourage and es­cort­ed them to the first and sec­ond floors of the build­ings. Me­dia per­son­nel pho­tographed and video­graphed the events of the tour.There was no oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive of any con­tract­ing firm present dur­ing the tour.

Days lat­er, Williams told the me­dia the po­lice had in­for­ma­tion that Ro­driguez was in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ty and had passed on this in­for­ma­tion to the Gov­ern­ment. Grif­fith, mean­while, vowed that he would weed out all crim­i­nal el­e­ments from state projects, main­tain­ing they would use the mon­ey earned from these con­tracts to strength­en their crim­i­nal gangs. He re­it­er­at­ed this again yes­ter­day.

Both the PNM and the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, on the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions cam­paign trail, have since crit­i­cised the award of a state con­tract to a sus­pect­ed gang leader.Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, John at­trib­uted Ro­driguez' pres­ence at the tour to his be­ing "over en­thu­si­as­tic." She said, "He's there every day. If you go there now you will see him."The Span­ish guy is very en­thu­si­as­tic. Peo­ple like a lit­tle swag­ger. Some­times peo­ple just want a chance."

John made the dis­clo­sures at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the HDC of­fices on South Quay, Port-of-Spain, which she said she called to clear the air on the HDC's hir­ing prac­tices and its re­la­tions with gang lead­ers. Crit­i­cis­ing me­dia re­ports that Ro­driguez was the con­trac­tor, she said, "Last Fri­day when we toured the Dun­can Street fa­cil­i­ty, I was asked whether a gang leader got the con­tract. I said no and then I gave the name of the con­trac­tor."

She said this in­for­ma­tion was writ­ten in a Guardian re­port by Richard Lord af­ter the Dun­can Street tour.In fact, Lord's ar­ti­cle did not con­tain the in­for­ma­tion as claimed by John. Nei­ther did a News­day re­port on the same tour.Both news­pa­pers, how­ev­er, did car­ry an in­ter­view with Ro­driguez, in which he was re­port­ed as say­ing he saw ar­ti­cles about gang mem­bers get­ting con­tracts for the po­lice post, but said no one, in­clud­ing the po­lice, had any proof against him.

"I am a reg­is­tered con­trac­tor and I work for what I want," he said.Ro­driguez al­so said he was in­volved in an HDC con­struc­tion project at Beetham Gar­dens and even worked for the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, an­oth­er state en­ti­ty.John said yes­ter­day that re­port­ing Ro­driguez had been giv­en a mil­lion-dol­lar con­tract could be putting his life in dan­ger."The man's life is prob­a­bly now at risk. Peo­ple may think he has come in­to very good for­tune."

"Fur­ther, he has not been charged with any of­fence and if he is not in­car­cer­at­ed, he can be seen any­where," she said."Span­ish wasn't hid­ing Fri­day."The claim that a gang leader had been giv­en the Dun­can Street con­tract was made by Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, while speak­ing dur­ing the bud­get de­bate. She did not name the con­trac­tor.

The HDC and Dun­can Street

The po­lice post project came about af­ter a spate of killings in the Dun­can Street area in Au­gust and is based on rec­om­men­da­tions from the Ryan Crime Re­port, John said."Gov­ern­ment adopt­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions and has man­dat­ed that we have to gen­er­ate pro­duc­tive em­ploy­ment."She said peo­ple in the Dun­can Street area have been com­plain­ing about a lack of em­ploy­ment and are, in fact, very proud of the work be­ing done on the po­lice post.

"Is it be­cause the project is on Dun­can Street that gang mem­ber­ship is be­ing as­cribed to it?" she asked. She said there has been no neg­a­tive in­ci­dent, vi­o­lent or oth­er­wise, on the project."Peo­ple run­ning their mouth. They know where Dun­can Street is?"Asked if the aim of project was al­so to cre­ate peace in the area, she replied, "I don't know about peace. I am not in the peace busi­ness. I'm about work. We can't pick and choose where we want to work."

John al­so crit­i­cised CoP Williams' re­mark that the po­lice know the gang lead­ers but do not have the ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute them.She said, "I find that an oxy­moron. Do you have the facts or do you have the ev­i­dence? If you have the ev­i­dence, lock the folks up. There's the an­ti-gang law."Asked how she felt about award­ing state con­tracts to gang lead­ers, John said, "That is a mat­ter for the po­lice."John then called on Williams to pass on the list of gang lead­ers he said he had to her.

"Put their names in the pa­pers too."She said she and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials held a meet­ing with two Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers last week Wednes­day on the same mat­ter and the names of gang lead­ers were nev­er dis­closed to her.

Hi-tech po­lice post

The new po­lice post on Dun­can Street has a 360-de­gree van­tage point, mon­i­tor­ing de­vices, and bul­let-proof glass pan­els.John said it is prob­a­bly the first so­lar-pow­ered build­ing in the coun­try. She said 12 fam­i­lies were re­lo­cat­ed from Build­ing 64 so that it could be con­vert­ed in­to a po­lice post."The ground floor con­tains a me­di­a­tion room, home­work cen­tre and, of course, a lit­tle charge room. It has a nice lit­tle wait­ing area and a kitch­enette.

"The first floor has sur­veil­lance space, of­fices, bunks and three dor­mi­to­ries. There is a tem­po­rary lit­tle lock-up fa­cil­i­ty here too."The sec­ond floor has ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fices, a mon­i­tor­ing room and an in­ter­view room."