Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment had sought to "con­ceal" that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had resided at a Tu­na­puna prop­er­ty af­ter last year's gen­er­al elec­tion when ques­tions were raised about it in the Sen­ate re­cent­ly, PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds has in­di­cat­ed.He did so yes­ter­day press­ing Gov­ern­ment to say whether the own­er of the Tu­na­puna prop­er­ty would re­ceive a $40 mil­lion NP truck­ing con­tract.Hinds has called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to de­clare her in­ter­est, if any, in the sit­u­a­tion.Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said she did not know if she was ac­quaint­ed with any of the par­ties in the NP con­tract since she did not know who got the con­tract.She said when a re­port on the con­tract was re­ceived she would be able to say if she knew them or not.The PM's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Gary Grif­fith said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had stayed at the Tu­na­puna house.

Grif­fith added: "In sim­i­lar man­ner to pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions when prime min­is­ters change, apart from the out­go­ing PM need­ing time to move out, there may al­so be the need for mi­nor in­fra­struc­tur­al and dec­o­ra­tive changes to the res­i­dence, in­clu­sive of staff, and this lo­gis­tic and ad­min­is­tra­tive change may take some­time."The Op­po­si­tion has al­leged that the own­er of the Tu­na­puna prop­er­ty owns a garbage truck­ing com­pa­ny which may be re­ceiv­ing the $40 mil­lion NP con­tract.Yes­ter­day at­tor­ney Mar­tin George, act­ing on be­half of CDS which held the NP con­tract be­fore and which bid for it again, said CDS Ltd was among three short­list­ed for the $40 mil­lion award.Oth­ers in­clud­ed Para­mount and Gopaul and Co Ltd (GCL), he added.

George said the list was brought down to CDS and GCL but sub­se­quent to the fi­nal eval­u­a­tion, CDS was of­fered a con­tract to sup­ply on­ly five trucks. That was re­ject­ed, he said.CDS Ltd sent a le­gal let­ter to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan ask­ing her to "in­ves­ti­gate".George said: "We've still not re­ceived any of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from the min­is­ter. We can on­ly imag­ine it's tak­ing her some­time to get the in­for­ma­tion from NP."When the T&T Guardian called GCL on Sun­day, no one an­swered. Yes­ter­day a man who an­swered, said the own­er of the com­pa­ny, Ralph Gopaul was not around."He don't come here so..." the man added.A woman who an­swered on an­oth­er try, said Gopaul was not in and they could try to re­lay in­for­ma­tion to him re­gard­ing calls.Sources close to Gopaul said he was in Toron­to, Cana­da, where one of his rel­a­tives got mar­ried last week­end. They said Gopaul was ex­pect­ed to be there for a cou­ple weeks.

Yes­ter­day Hinds added: "In April in the Sen­ate where I first raised the ques­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter stay­ing at the Tu­na­puna house, the min­is­ter in the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice cold­ly said the on­ly of­fi­cial res­i­dence is at St Ann's."They didn't ful­ly an­swer the ques­tion. Now Grif­fith con­firms the Prime Min­is­ter stayed in Tu­na­puna for some rea­son or oth­er. It's all ob­fus­ca­tion of the high­est or­der."Hinds has filed a ques­tion in the Sen­ate for an­swer at to­day's ses­sion on whether the po­lice had guard­ed the Tu­na­puna house and over what pe­ri­od.He has called for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prop­er­ty's own­er and what rental, if any, was paid in re­spect of the premis­es.