Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Patrick Man­ning and his wife, Hazel, yes­ter­day de­clined to speak about the loot­ing, van­dal­ism and de­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial Light­house Of Our Lord Je­sus Christ Church at the heights of Gua­napo.

Hazel, who greet­ed the me­dia at their Sumadh Gar­dens Town­house, Vista­bel­la, re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue. Wav­ing and smil­ing, Hazel said: "Speak to Mr Man­ning. He is at his con­stituen­cy of­fice."

A CNC3 and T&T Guardian cam­era crew spent two hours wait­ing to speak to Man­ning as he met with his con­stituents. How­ev­er, he de­clined to speak to me­dia per­son­nel in an of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty, say­ing, through a cor­re­spon­dent, he has no com­ment to make at this time. How­ev­er, he con­sent­ed to a brief meet­ing with the me­dia on a per­son­al ba­sis on the grounds his com­ments would be off the record. A to­tal of 17 con­stituents met with Man­ning yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing Pas­tor Bertril Baird, of Faith Re­vival Min­istries, of El Do­ra­do, Tu­na­puna. The of­fice was rel­a­tive­ly qui­et com­pared to the days when Man­ning was the Prime Min­is­ter.

In a brief in­ter­view, Baird said he met with Man­ning on a per­son­al ba­sis. Asked to com­ment on the loot­ing at the church, Baird said: "There is a gen­er­al com­mand­ment that says thou shalt not steal. No­body has a right to in­fringe on pri­vate and pub­lic prop­er­ty to steal." Man­ning has re­fused to com­ment on sev­er­al is­sues re­lat­ed to the church. Since May 24 con­struc­tion of the build­ing stopped and re­cent­ly loot­ers have made off with thou­sands of dol­lars worth of steel, blocks, ce­ment, nails and gal­va­nize sheets from the un­fin­ished struc­ture.