Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment's $2 mil­lion flag at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um should be flown at half-mast as it is a sym­bol of waste and cor­rup­tion, UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day.

Mooni­lal made the point in the Low­er House yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate on the Metrol­o­gy Bill which spec­i­fies new unit for mea­sure­ments of items in the pub­lic do­main. Strik­ing out against Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue of com­pe­ten­cy, Mooni­lal stat­ed there was no fund­ing for an ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign for the pub­lic to learn about the new mea­sure­ments. Yet, he said Gov­ern­ment could spend $2mil­lion on the flag. Mooni­lal said spend­ing $2mil­lion on the flag was sim­ply ob­scene when there was no mon­ey to pro­vide wa­ter to con­sumers and oth­er ameni­ties. He said the flag­pole may turn out–for the Gov­ern­ment–to be like the "straw that broke the camel's back."

Not­ing that the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion had been in of­fice two years this week, Mooni­lal said the flag is "am­ple tes­ti­mo­ny of the 24 months." Tak­ing fur­ther is­sue with Gov­ern­ment, Mooni­lal said there was in­com­pe­tence in im­ple­ment­ing things. He said there was a pat­tern of this. Com­ment­ing on the deaths of three peo­ple at Ma­coya's Bai­ley bridge, Mooni­lal said the Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had the "au­dac­i­ty and in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty" to say the peo­ple, who were dead, should pay for dam­age to the bridge. Not­ing the is­sues of the $2mil­lion flag, the $10mil­lion out­door stage be­ing built at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann's, crime and the raid of a Sau­di Ara­bi­an of­fi­cial's ho­tel room, Mooni­lal said Gov­ern­ment was strain­ing the elas­tic­i­ty of the peo­ple. He not­ed that PNM coun­cil­lor St Servius Pam­phile had re­cent­ly been shot in Laven­tille while con­duct­ing his work as a me­ter read­er with T&TEC.

"We hope that the par­ty of which Mr Pam­phile is a mem­ber will do more to pro­tect him... Gov­ern­ment can­not even pro­tect work­ers and keep or­di­nary peo­ple safe dai­ly," Mooni­lal added. Mooni­lal called on Gov­ern­ment to apol­o­gise to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and the Sau­di Ara­bi­an Gov­ern­ment for the po­lice raid at the Sau­di Ara­bi­an of­fi­cial's ho­tel room. He said the UNC Gov­ern­ment had arranged, in its tenure, to have Saudia Ara­bi­an of­fi­cials come to T&T to is­sue visas when na­tion­als need­ed visas to at­tend Haj. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he said, cit­i­zens had to go to Venezuela to get visas. Mooni­lal al­so called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of cost-over­runs of Petrotrin projects. How­ev­er he said the State com­pa­ny had re­fused to pay crick­et cap­tain Daren Gan­ga, a Petrotrin em­ploy­ee, six weeks' salary. "But they (Min­is­ters) will go to Pres­i­dent's House to­mor­row night (to­day) and eat and drink whiskey and shake hands with team mem­bers–it is shame­ful and dis­grace­ful," Mooni­lal added.