Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her stay at a Tu­na­puna house owned by her friends Ralph and Mau­reen Gopaul was at no ad­di­tion­al cost to tax­pay­ers."So there is ab­solute­ly noth­ing in terms of stay­ing there," she said."The on­ly cost that might have come to the State...it's the time I was there they would have had se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel."Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed this dur­ing an in­ter­view with re­porters, af­ter the open­ing of the Bon Air West Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre.She said she did not rent, buy or lease the premis­es or even pay a con­tract­ed sum dur­ing her stay which end­ed last De­cem­ber."What would have hap­pened (was) I stayed there from time to time, while I con­tin­ued to live at my pri­vate home at Char­lo Vil­lage and at Phillip­ines," the PM said."I stayed there in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate my pub­lic en­gage­ments in the North."She said she stayed there be­fore the elec­tion and af­ter the May 24 polls. "I did not go to rent a home...I know oth­ers rent­ed homes or stayed in ho­tels," she said."I did not bring that ad­di­tion­al cost to the tax­pay­er to get an­oth­er home to stay in whilst the of­fi­cial res­i­dence was be­ing tak­en care off."Asked about her re­la­tion­ship with the Gopauls, Per­sad-Bisses­sar quick­ly re­spond­ed: "We are not blood rel­a­tives. We are not re­lat­ed by blood. Not by blood or mar­riage."Asked to state the ex­act na­ture of the re­la­tion­ship, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "They were friends (of mine)."

She was then asked if the own­er of the Tu­na­puna house was the same per­son, who al­leged­ly re­ceived a $40 mil­lion con­tract from State-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Co Ltd (NP) to trans­port flam­ma­ble gaso­lene, the PM said based on news­pa­per re­ports, "it ap­pears so."She quick­ly point­ed out that she had "not spo­ken with them since this mat­ter arose and, peo­ple may not be­lieve it, God's truth, I nev­er spoke to them about this con­tract, nor did I ever speak to the board about this con­tract."I am un­aware that they even ten­dered for the con­tract."The PM said as far as she was aware, the con­tract had not as yet been award­ed. She said she had "no in­ter­est in any con­tracts be­ing grant­ed by the state or any state en­ter­prise."She said with re­spect to the award of con­tracts, "boards are ex­pect­ed to be faith­ful to the ten­der­ing rules and to be fair. "It would be un­fair and un­just, in my view, to ex­clude per­sons from bid­ding for con­tracts sim­ply be­cause I know them," Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.She said there were laws to deal with these mat­ters. She said her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship re­mained com­mit­ted to the best pro­cure­ment prac­tices and the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee was now look­ing at that mat­ter.She then warned: "Should any mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment or any mem­ber of any board trans­gress against these laws and prac­tices, then I will deal with it de­ci­sive­ly as I have al­ready demon­strat­ed."

Asked re­peat­ed­ly if the NP con­tract is­sue was any dif­fer­ent to the cir­cum­stances which caused the dis­missal of for­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Mary King, the PM said: I don't know if it is dif­fer­ent. Let me wait and see the re­port. I hon­est­ly don't know."The PM de­clined de­tailed com­ment on claims by the leader of Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) Makan­dal Daa­ga that there was too much cor­rup­tion in the coun­try to­day. NJAC is a mem­ber of the PP Gov­ern­ment.She said she had not had a re­port of the state­ment and could not com­ment on it.The PM al­so said that the sus­pen­sion of San Fer­nan­do East MP, for­mer prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, was cause for sad­ness.She said, how­ev­er, that peo­ple should not be al­lowed to make mis­lead­ing state­ments in the Par­lia­ment and not be sanc­tioned for such acts of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.She said Man­ning's sus­pen­sion from the ser­vice of the Par­lia­ment would be for about one month.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges act­ed prop­er­ly in hav­ing the re­port brought to the Par­lia­ment as quick­ly as it did be­cause the ses­sion is to be pro­rogued next month.She said if that was not done, the mat­ter would have lapsed and no sanc­tion would have been ef­fect­ed.

Min­is­ter names in­ves­ti­ga­tors

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan yes­ter­day ap­point­ed an in­de­pen­dent team to re­view the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the award of a trans­port con­tract by NP.This, af­ter a re­quest by CDS Trans­port Lim­it­ed for the min­is­ter to in­ves­ti­gate the award of the con­tract.She said that was done af­ter yes­ter­day's meet­ing with NP's board.She said it is to be led by In­di­ra Ram­paul-Chadee, act­ing head, le­gal mat­ters at the En­er­gy Min­istry.Oth­er mem­bers of the team are Reynold Ma­hadeo, head of Au­dit of Pro­duc­tion Shar­ing Con­tracts; Joyce Lynch, le­gal ad­vis­er; and Deb­o­rah Per­sadie-Jones, man­ag­er, Com­mer­cial and Project Con­trols.The team has sev­en days to re­port to the min­is­ter.