Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj has dis­missed claims by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning that Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley was work­ing with him to bring down the PNM Gov­ern­ment. De­liv­er­ing a wide-rang­ing ad­dress at Boysie's Bar, Mayo, on Wednes­day night, Ma­haraj de­fend­ed Row­ley, say­ing he was try­ing to pro­tect the peo­ple's in­ter­est by rais­ing con­cern about the "squan­der­ma­nia" at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T. Ma­haraj said Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was guilty of a crim­i­nal charge by re­fus­ing to act against Ude­cott to pro­tect the peo­ple's monies.

"On Mon­day, Row­ley and my­self showed Man­ning he is cul­pa­ble in the mat­ter...There is a sit­u­a­tion were there is so much wrong-do­ing and Man­ning is still en­cour­ag­ing Hart," Ma­haraj said. "Row­ley said the peo­ple's mon­ey is in­volved and Gov­ern­ment should act to pro­tect the peo­ple's mon­ey." Ma­haraj said the mon­ey which is go­ing to Ude­cott be­longs to the peo­ple of T&T. "This mon­ey could have been used to fix Tor­tu­ga road, now they telling me they don't have mon­ey to fix the roads in Tabaquite," he said. He said if Man­ning failed to act against Ude­cott, he would act by fil­ing le­gal ac­tion. "There is a team of lawyers look­ing at all the ev­i­dence tak­en be­fore the com­mis­sion of en­quiry," he said.

"They are analysing the ev­i­dence and in two weeks' time, I will get a sum­ma­ry of the ev­i­dence to show which pub­lic of­fi­cial has com­mit­ted cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice. "I will take the ev­i­dence to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. "As long as there is ev­i­dence against an in­di­vid­ual and against a cab­i­net min­is­ter or the Prime Min­is­ter, I will, on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T, lay a pri­vate in­dictable com­plaint. "Man­ning said Row­ley and I want the Gov­ern­ment to fall, but we are just try­ing to pro­tect the peo­ple's in­ter­est." The Tabaquite MP not­ed that hun­dreds of peo­ple were suf­fer­ing from a lack of wa­ter, poor drainage, flood­ing and de­plorable roads, while bil­lions were be­ing wast­ed on Ude­cott.