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Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Roget 'sheds light' on T&TEC with DPP

by

20100414

The Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get has sub­mit­ted to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard a "stack of ev­i­dence" point­ing to al­leged cor­rup­tion in the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and its mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar street-light­ing project. Ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al union sup­port­ers, Ro­get went to Gas­pard's of­fice at Win­sure Build­ing, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day in an at­tempt to per­son­al­ly de­liv­er the doc­u­ments.

But he was un­able to meet Gas­pard as he was told the DPP was in court. In the let­ter, Ro­get called on Gas­pard to in­ves­ti­gate the al­leged abuse in the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure at T&TEC and the Street Light­ing Im­ple­men­ta­tion Unit. He al­leged sev­er­al breach­es of law and acts of cor­rup­tion were com­mit­ted. Ro­get added in the let­ter that for over a year of­fi­cials have been in pos­ses­sion of the find­ings of an au­dit in­to the street-light­ing project but no ac­tion has been tak­en.

The au­dit was com­mis­sioned in late 2008 af­ter the OW­TU passed on doc­u­ments to Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid. Ro­get said the find­ings of the au­dit were passed to act­ing Com­mis­sion of Po­lice James Philbert, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. "The line Min­is­ter (Ab­dul-Hamid) promised to lay the find­ings of the au­dit in Par­lia­ment but the re­port end­ed up in the Min­istry of the AG and has not seen the light of day," Ro­get not­ed in the let­ter. Ro­get said be­cause of the lack of ac­tion, the union de­cid­ed to for­ward the doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence to an in­de­pen­dent body–the DPP.

Among the doc­u­ments for­ward­ed to Gas­pard were in­voic­es and let­ters ex­changed be­tween T&TEC's se­nior man­age­ment of­fi­cials. Speak­ing to re­porters, Ro­get said he ex­pect­ed Gas­pard to con­tact him on re­ceipt of the doc­u­ments. He said if no ac­tion is tak­en by the DPP the union would re­sort to protest. "Work­ers in T&TEC have been robbed and the na­tion has been robbed to fa­cil­i­tate the greed of per­sons," he said. "We want jus­tice to be served and we will not stop our ac­tions un­til jus­tice is served," Ro­get said.


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