Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald has dis­missed ac­cu­sa­tions that bur­saries award­ed through her min­istry served as a slush-fund to fur­ther the ed­u­ca­tion of mem­bers of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

She de­nied that the dis­burse­ment of more than $45 mil­lion in bur­saries through her min­istry for the pe­ri­od 2003 to 2007 dis­crim­i­nat­ed against non-PNM mem­bers. "It does not dis­crim­i­nate against any­one, whether sup­port­er of the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress), PNM or any oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty...The pro­gramme has al­ways been and con­tin­ues to be open to all," Mc­Don­ald said in a state­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. "For every well-known name on the list of re­cip­i­ents which the po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunists have high­light­ed, there are hun­dreds more of or­di­nary, every­day, law-abid­ing and de­serv­ing cit­i­zens of this coun­try who have been helped." Among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the min­istry's bur­saries in­clud­ed Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma, Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Paige De Leon and CN­MG ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er Cur­tis Williams. Their names were among the list­ed re­cip­i­ents of bur­saries from the min­istry be­tween 2003 and 2007, which was re­leased to the In­do-Trin­ba­go Equal­i­ty Coun­cil (ITEC) fol­low­ing a court or­der.

Ac­cord­ing to Mc­Don­ald, the avail­abil­i­ty of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance through her min­istry for the pur­suit of ter­tiary stud­ies was "so well-known to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty" that for­mer and cur­rent mem­bers of Par­lia­ment from the Op­po­si­tion sub­mit­ted cov­er let­ters in sup­port of ap­pli­ca­tions from their con­stituents. She re­vealed that these in­clud­ed the UNC's for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, Dr Reeza Mo­hammed and its Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. Mc­Don­ald added that her min­istry re­ceived tele­phone calls from ei­ther Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans or their con­stituen­cy of­fi­cers that queried the sta­tus of ap­pli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted. She said these in­clud­ed queries re­lat­ed to the con­stituents of Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Dr Adesh Nanan. "Not one got (a bur­sary)," Mooni­lal said, "not one con­stituent got." Mc­Don­ald al­so pro­ceed to of­fer an apol­o­gy for em­bar­rass­ment suf­fered through the pub­li­ca­tion of de­tails re­lat­ed to re­cip­i­ents of fi­nan­cial sup­port from her min­istry to pur­sue fur­ther stud­ies.

"I wish to speak di­rect­ly to all the re­cip­i­ents of fi­nan­cial stud­ies as­sis­tance whose names ap­peared in the me­dia for the years 2003 to 2007, you have done noth­ing wrong," she said. Mc­Don­ald and said that it was she and her min­istry who had done wrong. She said: "I know you are feel­ing hurt and em­bar­rassed. Stand proud, stand tall. Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to serve you un­wa­ver­ing­ly. "None of those who sought fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance did so with the ex­pec­ta­tion that their per­son­al cir­cum­stances would have been ex­posed for pub­lic ridicule and I here­by apol­o­gise for those who ac­cess our ser­vices and now find them­selves and their fam­i­lies fac­ing acute em­bar­rass­ment through me­dia ex­po­sure."