Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is of­fer­ing to sell her Phillip­ine home to San Fer­nan­do East MP Patrick Man­ning for $30 mil­lion. This fig­ure is in stark con­trast to the $150 mil­lion that Man­ning has al­leged the two-storey struc­ture is worth. Per­sad-Bisses­sar open­ly made the chal­lenge to Man­ning dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, where she ve­he­ment­ly de­nied the al­le­ga­tions made by the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

De­scrib­ing the al­le­ga­tions as "mis­chief," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Who would be­lieve a house could cost $150 mil­lion. In fact, if he gives me $30 mil­lion for the house right now I would sell it to him. He does not have to wor­ry about the bal­ance. Give me $30 mil­lion now and take it... "It is to­tal­ly false and de­signed to bring me in­to dis­re­pute. So far, I have on­ly spent $3 mil­lion on that house; to com­plete it may cost around $500,000."

Kam­la house facts

Prob­ing by Sun­day Guardian has re­vealed that PMs home at Phillip­ine has been un­der con­struc­tion since 2002–some eight years now.

�2The house, which is sit­u­at­ed on three acres of land, com­pris­es six bed­rooms, in­clu­sive of a mas­ter suite, five bath­rooms, kitchen, din­ning room, liv­ing room, two study rooms, laun­dry room, porch and a splash pool.

�2�Fur­ther prob­ing re­vealed that two parcels of the land were pur­chased in 1990 at a cost of $85,000 per acre from for­mer as­sis­tant Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er, Wal­ter Archibald.

�2 The third par­cel of land which ad­joins the two-acre par­cel, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands, was pur­chased in 1995 from own­er of Para­mount Trans­port Kei­th Lutch­mans­ingh at a cost of $110,000.

�2 In­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian has re­vealed that de­ceased at­tor­ney Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo ex­e­cut­ed two deeds on De­cem­ber 4, 1990 for the two acres of land. The deed num­bers are reg­is­tered as 198110 of 1990, while the prop­er­ty as­sess­ment num­bers are list­ed as 3zn-231 and 3zn-232.

�2 The third acre of land was pur­chased on June 12, 1995. The deed num­ber 10428 was ex­e­cut­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the prop­er­ty as­sess­ment num­ber is list­ed as 3zn-36.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firms deed in­for­ma­tion

Con­firm­ing the in­for­ma­tion yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I have my deeds as proof when I pur­chased the parcels of land. I chal­lenge Mr Man­ning to make those state­ments out of Par­lia­ment. Des­per­ate peo­ple do des­per­ate things." Per­sad-Bisses­sar fur­ther re­vealed that on March 5, 2001 ap­proval for con­struc­tion of a dwelling house was grant­ed by re­tired cer­ti­fied en­gi­neer, Vas­co Lo­rielle and build­ing in­spec­tor, A Beux. The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion grant­ed fur­ther ap­proval on April 8, 2002. "At all times ma­te­ri­als, all as­sets, in­come, li­a­bil­i­ties have been de­clared on my In­tegri­ty In Pub­lic Life forms, in­clud­ing the land and build­ing," the Prime Min­is­ter de­clared.

'I have my WASA bill'

The Prime Min­is­ter fur­ther de­nied the al­le­ga­tion that her Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) con­nec­tion were il­le­gal. Quot­ing the ac­count num­bers–798571-697073 (T&TEC) and 0378970e (WASA), Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I have a copy of a WASA bill in my pos­ses­sion right now. If I had an il­le­gal con­nec­tion would I be able to pay my bills?

My hus­band Gre­go­ry has been a doc­tor for over 30 years and I am an at­tor­ney for over 25 years, we have sac­ri­ficed and worked hard for what we want. It is our hard earned in­come over the last years that is be­ing used to build that house. If Mr Man­ning did not call snap elec­tion con­struc­tion would have been con­tin­u­ing still. It is to­tal­ly of­fen­sive be­cause it did not hap­pen overnight; not in six months... It is mis­chief."

The PM's Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre and res­i­dence in St Ann's. Pho­to: An­dre Alexan­der

The en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre at the PM's Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, tak­en yes­ter­day. Pho­to: Kei­th Matthews

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning claimed that PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's house in Phillip­ine cost $150 mil­lion and is larg­er than the PM's res­i­dence in St Ann's.

The facts...

About the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre and res­i­dence

�2 For­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning built the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's at about $175.3 mil­lion.

�2 The fi­nal cost of the of­fi­cial res­i­dence was $41, 952,091 mil­lion and $63,478,403 mil­lion for the diplo­mat­ic cen­tre. Oth­er costs of $42,584,639 mil­lion were al­so in­curred for de­sign of the fa­cil­i­ties plus con­struc­tion of ex­ter­nal struc­tures in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty, a pool and "ad­di­tion­al wa­ter fea­tures."

�2 Browne con­firmed the ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ed an ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing, a mul­ti-ve­hi­cle garage, a dri­vers' lounge for dri­vers of vis­it­ing dig­ni­taries and ad­di­tion­al pub­lic wash­rooms.

Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre fea­tures

�2 Two con­fer­ence rooms, guest, sit­ting and din­ing rooms, prayer room. The re­main­ing area pro­vides ad­di­tion­al meet­ing/re­cep­tion ar­eas, in­clud­ing sleep­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for vis­it­ing VIPs, plus se­cu­ri­ty and ser­vice re­quire­ments. Space al­lo­cat­ed for the liv­ing quar­ters is 557 square me­tres.

PM's res­i­dence

In the af­ter­math of the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar moved in­to the PM's of­fi­cial res­i­dence af­ter the one-month an­niver­sary of her vic­to­ry. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said on the cam­paign trail she was not in­ter­est­ed in liv­ing at the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence and had raised con­cerns about the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar project, which was built by the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd. In­stead she had of­fered the house to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to use af­ter a part of the roof­ing at Pres­i­dent's House col­lapsed. He de­clined the of­fer.