Richard Lord

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day ac­cused Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj of sup­port­ing the Ma­ha Sab­ha in its agen­da to "per­se­cute" prin­ci­pal of Tu­na­puna Hin­du School. Row­ley made the state­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice. He was re­spond­ing to re­ports of at­tempts by gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat Ma­haraj, to pre­vent African stu­dents from at­tend­ing the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School. Row­ley said the mat­ter was "trou­bling" and was get­ting worse be­cause of the Gov­ern­ment not mak­ing a pub­lic pol­i­cy po­si­tion on the mat­ter. He said the in­volve­ment of "a min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment" in the mat­ter was even more trou­bling.

He lat­er named Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj as the one who was en­gaged in "pros­e­cut­ing the agen­da of the Ma­ha Sab­ha in per­se­cut­ing and at­tempt­ing to pros­e­cute the prin­ci­pal of the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School." He said that was be­ing at­tempt­ed "on the grounds that she had com­mit­ted in­frac­tions." Row­ley said he was of­fend­ed by that move and the rest of the so­ci­ety should al­so be of­fend­ed by the Ma­ha Sab­ha's move. He said the Ma­ha Sab­ha was mov­ing against the school's prin­ci­pal be­cause she had al­lowed "black chil­dren" from the catch­ment area at­tend the school. Row­ley stressed: "That is an ex­treme­ly of­fen­sive de­vel­op­ment and this coun­try may pro­vide the re­buff to all those who may ad­vance to us this kind of de­vel­op­ment." Row­ley said such is­sues were not sup­posed to be part of the coun­try's agen­da.

"If we con­tin­ue down this road, for much longer, we could em­bark on a course from which it would be dif­fi­cult to turn back," he in­sist­ed. Row­ley then called for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to tell the coun­try how she in­tend­ed to deal with the in­volve­ment of the Trans­port Min­is­ter in the mat­ter. Ma­haraj, when con­tact­ed for com­ment, said Row­ley was "a stranger to the truth and has start­ed apol­o­gis­ing as his for­mer leader did last week." He said he went to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion in re­sponse to a call from Ma­ha Sab­ha gen­er­al sec­re­tary Sat­narayan Ma­haraj.

The Trans­port Min­is­ter said when he ar­rived there, he re­alised that Ma­haraj was not in any trou­ble so he went to the car park and await­ed him (Sat). He said he was not in­volved in mak­ing any charge or state­ment on the mat­ter in­volv­ing the prin­ci­pal of the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School. He ac­cused Row­ley of try­ing to en­gage in "po­lit­i­cal mis­chief." And Row­ley has re­newed his call to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh to "state un­equiv­o­cal­ly, the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion in re­sist­ing this un­savoury de­vel­op­ment."

Asked to re­spond to Gopeesingh's ad­vice to the Op­po­si­tion to take the mat­ter to the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion, Row­ley said it was a mat­ter for the Gov­ern­ment and not nec­es­sar­i­ly to "some mi­nor agency of the State." He in­sist­ed the mat­ter was a very se­ri­ous one and he then warned the Prime Min­is­ter "about the po­ten­tial for these kinds of things to de­vel­op or to grow when she ap­point­ed De­vant Ma­haraj to the Cab­i­net. "The chick­en has come home to roost ear­li­er than I ex­pect­ed the eggs to hatch," he added.