Gail Alexan­der

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day has called on his suc­ces­sor, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar, to ex­plain what Sasha Mo­hammed's job as the Prime Min­is­ter's Events Ad­vis­er is all about.Pan­day raised the query af­ter Mo­hammed's job de­scrip­tion ap­peared re­cent­ly in con­nec­tion with the furore con­cern­ing short­lived SIA/SSA head Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine.Pan­day said: "What ex­act­ly is this post of 'Ad­vis­er on Events' about? It sounds like some­thing that can be done by a sec­re­tari­at or oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive staff. It sounds like a waste of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey.

"If the PP has made so many promis­es about trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter should read­i­ly ex­plain pub­licly what this spe­cial post is and how much Mo­hammed is be­ing paid for it."The pub­lic vot­ed against this sort of waste of tax­pay­ers mon­ey, they have a right to know what these po­si­tions are and the cost."He said: "This Gov­ern­ment can­not con­tin­ue to do the same things the PNM did be­cause change is what the peo­ple vot­ed for.

"Roodal Mooni­lal said the most stu­pid thing when asked about the SIA is­sue re­cent­ly. He said no­body knew who the SIA head was un­der the PNM. But he miss­es the point that the PP won on the ba­sis of change and has to op­er­ate dif­fer­ent­ly to the PNM."Pan­day said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's prais­ing of him-as for­mer UNC leader-at Mon­day's UNC cel­e­bra­tion was "a red her­ring.""The ad­min­is­tra­tion knows it is un­pop­u­lar and that I have been out­spo­ken, so any praise of me might have been seen as a di­ver­sion that could re­dound to their ben­e­fit."

"I'm al­so cu­ri­ous about the praise since she has not spo­ken to me since she be­came Prime Min­is­ter. I had called her home to con­grat­u­late her when she won. A man an­swered and gave me a num­ber to call but when I called there was no an­swer and I left a con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage with him to give her. I nev­er heard from her al­though she claims she called me. That's not true.

"More im­por­tant is how much Mon­day night's cel­e­bra­tion cost, whether it was paid for by Gov­ern­ment funds or pri­vate and if so by whom.""In­stead of prais­ing me, she should get her Gov­ern­ment to per­form - while the PP was cel­e­brat­ing there were 34 mur­ders in 24 days for 2011 and they say crime is on the de­crease," Pan­day added.