Renu­ka Singh

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is lash­ing back at his suc­ces­sor Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald for her dig about his spe­cial liv­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions set up at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter.

"I am a mem­ber of the Hy­att Re­gency Club and used those fa­cil­i­ties reg­u­lar­ly to con­duct busi­ness in­clud­ing its board­room and hos­pi­tal­i­ty cen­tre," he said.

It was re­port­ed by the me­dia that dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate last Tues­day night, Mc­Don­ald de­scribed a space at the Hy­att ho­tel as "Roody's cor­ner" and called on Mooni­lal to ex­plain why he need­ed that space at the ho­tel.

But Mooni­lal, in a text ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian, said it was "re­gret­table" that Mc­Don­ald did not have "the high­est lev­el of ex­pe­ri­ence" in busi­ness and in­dus­try. "I ran a mul­ti bil­lion-dol­lar mega in­dus­try which has now been slashed and giv­en to the new min­is­ter," Mooni­lal said.

"She has not yet de­vel­oped the big mind­ed­ness, ex­ec­u­tive mind­set, su­pe­ri­or hu­man re­source per­son­nel and ex­per­tise re­quired to deal with mega projects with glob­al in­dus­tri­al­ists, bankers, pol­i­cy mak­ers and diplo­mats," Mooni­lal said.

He said that Mc­Don­ald need­ed to un­der­stand that those "glob­al play­ers" need­ed a prop­er place to meet.

"Mrs Mc­Don­ald would soon dis­cov­er that glob­al play­ers pre­fer not to meet on Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade or at Wood­ford Square. In­ter­na­tion­al brand-name ho­tels as­sure such peo­ple high ser­vice and se­cu­ri­ty," he said.

He said that as the min­is­ter in charge of that mega min­istry, an MP, and a leader of the House, he had six of­fices, and al­so used of­fices of the state com­pa­nies "if and when con­ve­nient."

Mooni­lal said it was those kinds of arrange­ments that al­lowed him to "com­plete three hos­pi­tals, start two hos­pi­tals, eight po­lice sta­tions, a fire sta­tion and thou­sands of homes.

"It is dis­taste­ful to cast as­per­sions on a lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al brand name ho­tel that was al­so un­der my min­istry and con­tributes to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T," he said.

He said that while there were now ques­tions over his links to that ho­tel, he found it "in­ter­est­ing that all PNM MPs ea­ger­ly col­lect­ed their free $3,000 Hy­att Car­ni­val fete tick­ets every year."

In her con­tri­bu­tion, Mc­Don­ald said that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment had come in­to pow­er and "en­joyed them­selves," but she planned to take her job more se­ri­ous­ly and would not take ad­van­tage of the "perks."