Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Ude­cott chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Nee­lan­da Ram­paul ac­cu­mu­lat­ed a $3.1 mil­lion bill over sev­er­al months at the Hy­att Re­gency for cook­ies, pina co­la­da drinks, pork chops and ho­tel sleep­overs, all clas­si­fied as "of­fice ex­pens­es," says Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal. "I have the bills from Ude­cott right there-it in­clud­ed a $2,000 bill for eat­ing," Mooni­lal added, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's 2012 bud­get de­bate in the Low­er House. "These items were ob­tained from Sep­tem­ber 2009 to April 2010, clas­si­fied as 'of­fice ex­pens­es.' "Wan­ton waste! All paid for by tax­pay­ers!"

Mooni­lal said Ude­cott car­ried an im­age of cor­rup­tion since it was the "play­ground for (ex-chair­man) Calder Hart." Dur­ing the PNM's tenure, Mooni­lal said, it was al­so a case of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion "gone wild." He added: "There were 'OJT' con­trac­tors-some­body's friend who get a con­tract and give it out to a con­trac­tor...peo­ple who nev­er build a dog ken­nel was sud­den­ly build­ing 300 hous­es." Mooni­lal said a Debe project of 2005 still wasn't com­plet­ed, and had a 250 per cent cost over­run from $71 mil­lion to $182 mil­lion, plus re­quir­ing $50 mil­lion in re­me­di­al work. He said an Ari­ma house had five walls in a bed­room and no room for the bed, while oth­er projects had cracked hous­es, no waste-wa­ter plants or pow­er.

Mooni­lal said part of this chain went straight back to PNM's San Fer­nan­do East MP (Patrick Man­ning.) On Ram­paul's Hy­att bills, Mooni­lal list­ed items ob­tained by Ram­paul on Ude­cott's tab, in­clud­ing two dozen cook­ies and all room charges paid for by Ude­cott. "They buy up to Du­ra­cell bat­tery and all and put it on Ude­cott bill," the min­is­ter said. "...Burg­er, chick­en, av­o­ca­do...They run up bills, in one case for $2,000, all for eat­ing. "Caviar, pork chops, lamb chops... In Jan­u­ary 2010, there is a pool bar bill for pina co­la­da (drink), liquor, sushi (fish dish), salmon, Spicy Ne­griri (food dish) and a 'Vir­gin Ba­nana' (drink). "In Sep­tem­ber 2009, it was Fish of the Day (dish), mac­a­roon cook­ies, oat­meal and al­mond cook­ies. "All of this was paid for by the tax­pay­ers!

"I have no dif­fi­cul­ty with peo­ple who have their lav­ish tastes and have ex­ec­u­tive meals and drinks, but when it comes to pay­ing, take the mon­ey from your purse or pock­et and pay-don't put it on an ex­pense ac­count!" He said items tak­en by Ram­paul from the Hy­att's pool bar and oth­er places are "your per­son­al ex­pens­es... it's not for the tax­pay­er to foot the bill." "But the PNM doesn't want us to al­lo­cate mon­ey for foren­sic au­dits be­cause if we au­dit prop­er­ly, we might find out about these pork chops and lamb chops, etc," Mooni­lal added. Mooni­lal said Ram­paul al­so over­rode oth­er Ude­cott per­son­nel in writ­ing par­ties to de­mand pay­ments. He said ex-chair­man Hart had a par­al­lel struc­ture along­side the du­ly em­ployed Ude­cott per­son­nel.

Al­though the Uff com­mis­sion found there was no au­di­tor at Ude­cott, Mooni­lal said one Dei­dre Eti­enne was list­ed as an ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er (Risk and Au­dit) at a month­ly salary of $70,000. He al­so list­ed oth­er high­ly-paid Ude­cott man­agers among Hart's team. He said those in­clud­ed le­gal ser­vices man­ag­er Richard Free­man (earn­ing $50,000 month­ly), Saman­tha Young ($49,000 pack­age) and fi­nance man­ag­er Ri­car­do O'Brien ($53,000 pack­age). Mooni­lal said the PNM gov­ern­ment had on­ly "thown a tar­pau­lin" over the Red House for eight years, and be­tween 2005 and 2010, some $88 mil­lion was spent on restora­tion work.

He said roof restora­tion was de­layed 650 days and 55 per cent of this was done, but there were 37 items of vari­a­tions and an es­ca­la­tion of $8.7 mil­lion. He said scaf­fold­ing com­pa­ny Struc­tur­al En­gi­neer­ing and Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices was paid thou­sands dai­ly to­wards a to­tal of $2.2 mil­lion of a $3 mil­lion con­tract for Red House work. Not­ing cost over­runs for sev­er­al projects, Mooni­lal said: "The day a project moves from $171 mil­lion to $750 mil­lion, that's the day I and those of us on this (PP) side need to pack up and go back to Cuchewan Trace, go back to Debe and Fe­lic­i­ty and where we come from." He said for 2012, his min­istry was aim­ing for 6,952 hous­ing units and hoped to dis­trib­ute 1,000 hous­es for Christ­mas 2012.

Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment had ex­pand­ed CEPEP from 5,000 work­ers to 9,000, and To­ba­go would soon have CEPEP. The pro­gramme would now al­so be clean­ing beach­es and riv­er mouths, he added. Mooni­lal said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan's di­vi­sion had re­ceived al­lo­ca­tions for pay­ing le­gal fees since the PNM gov­ern­ment had left the PP "with bills." He said that in one year, the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion had had no scan­dal. "What?!!!" roared the PNM side.

Mooni­lal called on the PNM to say what mon­ey was mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed. He said when is­sues were raised, the mat­ter was stopped, re­called or re­voked. He won­dered how PNM stal­warts felt about PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley aban­don­ing the bal­isi­er tie which PNM founder Er­ic Williams had used and which ex-leader Man­ning main­tained. Mooni­lal said the Op­po­si­tion as an al­ter­na­tive gov­ern­ment had failed to pro­duce al­ter­na­tive bud­get pro­pos­als.