Geisha Kow­lessar

The much an­tic­i­pat­ed probe in­volv­ing Calder Hart, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott), fea­tured promi­nent­ly at last Fri­day's sit­ting of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment which fo­cused on the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC). The is­sue was raised by the com­mit­tee's chair­man Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan, who not­ed cer­tain in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing Hart.

Ramkhelawan said he re­ceived a let­ter from for­mer par­lia­men­tar­i­an Lin­coln May­ers which had al­so been copied to PSC chair­man Prof Ramesh De­osaran. Quot­ing parts of the let­ter Ramkhelawan said: "There ap­pears to be con­cern over what ap­pears to be gross tar­di­ness on the part of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs in com­plet­ing the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in the mat­ter cap­tioned, 'Ques­tion­able progress with re­spect to po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Mr Calder Hart, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man'."

Ramkhelawan asked De­osaran whether the Hart probe was part of "de­lib­er­a­tions" with Gibbs on the sta­tus of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main. De­osaran replied: "The an­swer is yes, that and sev­er­al oth­ers." When he was pressed to share spe­cif­ic de­tails, or tell the com­mit­tee whether the mat­ter had reached a con­clu­sion, De­osaran said: "He (Gibbs) is yet to give us fur­ther in­for­ma­tion. He kept re­spond­ing, 'What you want this for?' on this and oth­er mat­ters. We had asked him about two oth­er en­quires more re­cent­ly and he keeps telling us he can't pro­vide us.

"All he tells us gen­er­al­ly is to say which of­fi­cer is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions and we have to write him back and say, 'No we need some­thing fur­ther than that'." De­osaran al­so brought up the is­sue of the num­ber of paid ad­ver­tise­ments be­ing placed by the Po­lice Ser­vice. He said very soon Gibbs will have to ac­count for the amount of mon­ey be­ing spent on the ads.

"They seem to con­vey the im­pres­sion through me­dia re­leas­es that all is well and where­as there is strong ev­i­dence of crime, stab­bings and oth­er in­ci­dents that per­haps give rise to se­ri­ous con­cern de­spite of all these ad­ver­tise­ments," De­osaran said. Mak­ing ref­er­ence to the 21st Cen­tu­ry Project launched in the West­ern Di­vi­sion last year, De­osaran said when Gibbs was asked to pro­vide an eval­u­a­tion re­port on the ini­tia­tive, he said the project was a pi­lot study and there was no com­plet­ed eval­u­a­tion.

"We were al­so dis­turbed to know, as he (Gibbs) claimed and he ap­par­ent­ly felt very con­fi­dent about it when we en­quired about the project he told us we should not wor­ry be­cause 'Cab­i­net al­ready ap­proved the project to be spread all over the coun­try and To­ba­go'. "Our con­cern in terms of the man­age­ment per­spec­tive is how could you roll out a plan that is not prop­er­ly eval­u­at­ed if you claim ini­tial­ly it was pi­lot study. So the pub­lic re­la­tions as­pect seems to be dri­ve the Po­lice Ser­vice's per­for­mance much more than sub­stan­tive achieve­ments at present," De­osaran said.