Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has com­mend­ed Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith for his all-out war against gang­sters but said the lu­cra­tive con­tracts giv­en to gang lead­ers un­der the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion is un­der­min­ing ef­forts to stop the gang war.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal called on Row­ley to ter­mi­nate con­tracts with gang lead­ers and to take ac­tion against any min­is­ter who gave con­tracts to gang­sters.

Iron­i­cal­ly, un­der Mooni­lal’s tenure as Hous­ing Min­is­ter in 2013, con­tracts were giv­en to known gang lead­ers, some of whom were ar­rest­ed by po­lice last week.

Yes­ter­day, he main­tained: “Row­ley’s regime has been gross­ly neg­li­gent in deal­ing with the scourge of gang war­fare.”

He added: “One re­port ex­pos­es the fact that the gov­ern­ment has been sit­ting on a shock­ing 2014 study, and has con­tin­ued to feed al­leged gang­sters by pro­vid­ing them with lu­cra­tive tax­pay­er-fund­ed con­tracts,”

He was re­fer­ring to a 17-page re­port com­piled by Grif­fith when he served as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion had tak­en de­ci­sive and far-reach­ing de­ci­sions fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions per­tain­ing to Life­S­port, and had al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” he said.

Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment failed to act in a time­ly man­ner on po­lice in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing in spite of the pas­sage of an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion.

“The fact that tax­pay­er-fi­nanced agen­cies are still pro­vid­ing re­ward­ing con­tracts to gang­sters four years af­ter the com­pre­hen­sive re­port is a se­ri­ous in­dict­ment on the in­com­pe­tent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. It al­so con­tra­dicts the oft-stat­ed all-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach to crime-fight­ing.

He not­ed that se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that they have names and ad­dress­es of gang op­er­a­tives.

“In­deed, the prime min­is­ter har­bours se­nior min­is­ters of his gov­ern­ment with known links to peo­ple be­fore the courts on drug traf­fick­ing charges and oth­er al­leged gang lead­ers. In­stead, the bald facts prove that the rul­ing regime has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the growth of the dead­ly gang cul­ture,” he said.

Mooni­lal said in­stead of blam­ing the past gov­ern­ment, Row­ley should as­sist law en­force­ment agen­cies by act­ing on the sig­nif­i­cant find­ings of the two re­ports.