Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley last night chal­lenged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to state whether a mem­ber of her gov­ern­ment is re­spon­si­ble for the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy over the al­leged award of a $40 mil­lion con­tract by Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP). He raised the mat­ter dur­ing a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at Star­lite Shop­ping Plaza in Diego Mar­tin. The PNM po­lit­i­cal leader said he had in­for­ma­tion that a min­is­ter had in­struct­ed NP to change the terms of the con­tract. He called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to name the min­is­ter.

Speak­ing to a crowd es­ti­mat­ed by the po­lice to be more than 2,000 in num­ber, Row­ley said just be­fore the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment came in­to pow­er last year, NP did a tech­ni­cal study to de­ter­mine whether it would be more eco­nom­i­cal to pur­chase or lease trucks to trans­port gas. He said it was de­tem­ined that it would be cheap­er to buy the trucks. That de­ci­sion, how­ev­er, was over­turned by the PP. Row­ley said he want­ed to know what made NP change from buy­ing to leas­ing trucks.

Row­ley said he had se­cured cer­tain doc­u­ments from NP, which in­di­cat­ed that the de­ci­sion to pur­chase the ve­hi­cles was over­turned by a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar must name the of­fi­cial. He pub­licly called on Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard to say if a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter was now un­der a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said nei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter nor At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan was say­ing any­thing about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The Op­po­si­tion Leader told par­ty sup­port­ers at the meet­ing that the PNM "must change and will change" to be­come more at­trac­tive to the pop­u­la­tion.

"There is go­ing to be change in the PNM," he de­clared, adding that there would be no Row­ley pol­i­cy in the op­po­si­tion par­ty. He said he want­ed to as­sure the na­tion that "those who got us where we are to­day will not be al­lowed to keep us here where we are to­day." Row­ley said the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion had ap­point­ed sev­er­al peo­ple to state en­ter­pris­es in in­ter­im ca­pac­i­ties, but they were still there. He said WASA CEO Gan­ga Singh was one such per­son. The PNM leader al­so called on the DPP to state whether a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter was un­der crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and to name the min­is­ter.

He said, too, that a sum of about $47 mil­lion in le­gal briefs was be­ing paid to cer­tain at­tor­neys by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. Row­ley fur­ther claimed that the Gov­ern­ment had to spend $13 mil­lion in ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ce­dures with the UK firm BAE over the can­cel­la­tion for the OPV con­tract. He al­so said the T&T econ­o­my was be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment's in­abil­i­ty to ad­dress the Cli­co bailout is­sue. He said that mat­ter would not be am­i­ca­bly re­solved un­til "cer­tain de­ci­sions are made."