Geisha Kow­lessar

Dr Mary King's sack­ing was ex­pect­ed and it was one in which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had no choice but to car­ry it out. King, the for­mer min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs, was fired by Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day, af­ter it was al­leged that King had fam­i­ly ties to Ix­anos Ltd, a soft­ware en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny which won a $100,000 Gov­ern­ment Web site de­vel­op­ment con­tract from her min­istry last No­vem­ber. And King's ax­ing, ac­cord­ing to chair­man of the PNM Franklin Khan, was a ter­ri­ble blow to the Gov­ern­ment. Khan said there was "no way" that King could have got away with be­ing sacked be­cause it was a predica­ment she brought up­on her­self. Khan was spoke to the me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter a lun­cheon host­ed by the Port-of-Spain Ro­tary Club at Good­will In­dus­tries. Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, off Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

"King was ob­vi­ous­ly in breach of Sec­tion 29, (1) and (2) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has said that it would launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and they are the right­ful peo­ple to so do to see if there are any pros­e­cu­r­ial as­pects to the mat­ter," Khan said. King al­so served as head of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al of T&T. Khan said he was not sur­prised by the swift ac­tion tak­en by Per­sad-Bisses­sar adding: "The way this thing un­fold­ed in the pub­lic do­main the Prime Min­is­ter had no oth­er choice but to act swift­ly." He said the Gov­ern­ment's rep­u­ta­tion was "now ob­vi­ous­ly tar­nished," point­ing out that it was the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship that brought down the PNM on al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion. "Grant­ed this is still a small quan­tum of mon­ey, but the prin­ci­ple is still in­tact, that is the re­al gist of the mat­ter," Khan said.