Pe­ter Bal­roop

There seems to be a lot more awry about the na­tion­al street-light­ing pro­gramme than the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to ad­mit.

Led by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid, the pow­ers-that-be ap­pear to be en­gaged in­tent­ly in pussy­foot­ing around the lights. Let's go down mem­o­ry lane. Back on Ju­ly 22, Ab­dul-Hamid was boxed in­to a cor­ner by Princes Town North MP Sub­has Pan­day, who brought the bur­geon­ing street-light­ing scan­dal in­to sharp fo­cus dur­ing a Low­er House sit­ting. In re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tions aired by Pan­day, who said he had got his in­for­ma­tion from an Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) re­port, Ab­dul-Hamid went so far as to name Roop­nar­ine Hard­ware and Ka­mus Muf­flers as two of the com­pa­nies be­ing probed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance's Cen­tral Au­dit Unit.

Each com­pa­ny, Ab­dul-Hamid tac­it­ly ad­mit­ted that day, had ben­e­fit­ed to the tune of mil­lions of dol­lars through the street-light­ing pro­gramme. Pan­day had not called names, but he said a hard­ware had prof­it­ed through the pro­gramme by pro­vid­ing ware­house space at a rental of $83,500 a month, to store elec­tric­i­ty poles, and Ab­dul-Hamid pro­vid­ed the link to Roop­nar­ine's Hard­ware. Pan­day al­so brought a muf­fler firm in­to the pic­ture, in­di­cat­ing that for the street-light­ing pro­gramme, the nor­mal one-and-a-half-inch pipe used to con­nect the street light to the pole was shelved, and a two-inch muf­fler that was im­port­ed for use on for­eign-used ve­hi­cles pressed in­to use. All this was in the cause of giv­ing friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from the pro­gramme, Pan­day ac­cused. Again, Ab­dul-Hamid, when he re­spond­ed, made a con­nec­tion with Ka­mus Muf­flers. Some $5 mil­lion was the cost to the tax­pay­er for the ware­house stor­age and muf­fler pack­age, ac­cord­ing to Pan­day.

All this took place dur­ing de­bate on a bill to re­move re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for street light­ing from the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and place it with­in the realm of T&TEC. From Pan­day's point of view, the move was cal­cu­lat­ed to en­trench cor­rup­tion with­in the com­mis­sion. He quot­ed the OW­TU as re­port­ing how a street-light­ing con­tract was bro­ken in­to sev­en parts, to avoid scruti­ny of T&TEC's board of di­rec­tors. In an­oth­er deal, a bid $23 mil­lion high­er than the next was ac­cept­ed. "Mr Min­is­ter, clear up this mess. T&TEC is smelling to high heav­ens," Pan­day urged Ab­dul-Hamid. Pan­day re­ferred to 21 in­voic­es which were ques­tion­able, to say the least, and de­clared it was not as if the PN­Mites in­volved were pre­pared to "make a lit­tle thief and run." In­stead, they in­tend­ed "to thief bold­face..." Pan­day then turned his guns on a "po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee" whose busi­ness trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing the street-light­ing pro­gramme had made the OW­TU see red. The man had been thick with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning, and both had been at the fore­front of the PNM cam­paign team lined up against him in Princes Town North for the No­vem­ber 5, 2007, gen­er­al elec­tion, Pan­day re­called.

Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, street lights were in­stalled "la vash" through­out the con­stituen­cy; some poles had four street lamps on them. "Like they had light in their heads," Pan­day quipped. Ab­dul-Hamid said the cen­tral au­dit unit, which he point­ed out was set up in 2001 by the UNC, had been asked to in­ves­ti­gate the ad­vanced me­ter­ing sys­tem, pur­chase of poles and the pur­chase of the met­al arms from the muf­fler firm. The UNC was on­ly cry­ing for a foren­sic au­dit to be done, and for the Fraud Squad to be called in to con­vey a sense of dra­ma, Ab­dul-Hamid de­clared. His gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion of hid­ing any­thing; in fact, in­tegri­ty was his gov­ern­ment's watch­word, Ab­dul-Hamid boast­ed. Now, fast-foward to the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence last Thurs­day, when Ab­dul-Hamid said he had re­ceived the cen­tral au­dit unit's re­port since May, but that Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to give T&TEC an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions that had been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the cen­tral au­dit unit. The OW­TU has been ob­serv­ing dark­ly that a se­nior Cab­i­net min­is­ter's son was in­volved in the street-light­ing pro­gramme, and the union's pres­i­dent, An­cil Ro­get, said he feared Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to sink the re­port while do­ing dam­age con­trol at the same time.

On Thurs­day, Ab­dul-Hamid said care­ful­ly no min­is­ter's son was in­volved in the Street Light­ing Im­ple­men­ta­tion Unit (SLIU). UNC Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Har­ry Par­tap, who is the shad­ow Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, took that as­sur­ance with a big pinch of salt. On Fri­day, Par­tap in­sist­ed that a min­is­ter's son was in­volved in the pro­gramme; not di­rect­ly in the unit, but as an im­porter of street lamps on be­half of T&TEC. "We can't un­der­stand why T&TEC had to re­spond to the find­ings of the cen­tral au­dit unit; we think that the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to hide some­thing," said Par­tap. From his per­spec­tive, when an or­gan­i­sa­tion is asked to con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the re­sults are hand­ed in, if al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing are made in the re­port, then the next log­i­cal step is to ask the Fraud Squad to step in. Par­tap said Gov­ern­ment would not be al­lowed to sani­tise the re­port, and from the start of the next Par­lia­ment ses­sion ear­ly next month the Op­po­si­tion would be on Ab­dul-Hamid's case. "We're cer­tain that T&TEC has de­cid­ed to in­crease its rates and fur­ther pe­nalise the poor peo­ple of T&T be­cause of cor­rup­tion in the com­mis­sion," de­clared Par­tap.