SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit has come un­der heavy crit­i­cism from the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter over ques­tions she raised about cheques from the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO) dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress vir­tu­al con­fer­ence, Mo­hit said she had been sent two cheques, dat­ed May 21, which showed pay­ments be­ing made by NAMDE­V­CO. She asked if the state en­ti­ty was pro­vid­ing any COVID-19 food sup­port oth­er than the food bas­kets that are cur­rent­ly be­ing dis­trib­uted to needy cit­i­zens.

“For ex­am­ple, is NAMDE­V­CO dis­trib­ut­ing cheques and can the board of NAMDE­V­CO state what these cheques are for?” she asked.

One of the cheques was for $244.85 and the oth­er was for $923.90.

“Is the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture aware of the op­er­a­tions of NAMDE­V­CO, which is un­der his purview, as it re­lates to the is­suance of cheques? Since what is in the pub­lic do­main are food bas­kets, in­come sup­port etc but not cheques, as MPs we are aware of food bas­kets and not cheques,” Mo­hit said.

She said the Op­po­si­tion has no prob­lem with peo­ple re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance and ac­cess­ing food or any type of as­sis­tance for their house­holds, but the par­ty want­ed to find out if the cheques were an­oth­er op­tion for peo­ple to ob­tain food.

In re­sponse, how­ev­er, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said the cheques rep­re­sent­ed wage pay­ments made on May 21 to ca­su­al labour­ers em­ployed at NAMDE­V­CO’s Wood­ford Lodge fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­agua­nas.

“These work­ers come from the UNC-held con­stituen­cies of Ch­agua­nas East and West, the ar­eas clos­est to the fa­cil­i­ty. They work as pro­duce han­dlers, pack­ers and oth­er roles re­lat­ed to the NAMDE­V­CO’s ac­tiv­i­ties,” Ramb­harat said.

He slammed Mo­hit for her com­ments, adding, “It’s a shame that MP Mo­hit will use her ig­no­rance of what a wage pay­ment looks like to em­bar­rass her own con­stituents and re­fer to their hard-earned wages as COVID-re­lief.”

Ramb­harat al­so sent out a doc­u­ment show­ing cheque num­bers paid to six peo­ple from NAMDE­V­CO. Three of those peo­ple were paid $244.85 and the oth­er three were paid $923.90. The pur­pose list­ed on the doc­u­ment for the pay­ments was “Net wages for work at WLF.”

Dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence, Mo­hit al­so raised ques­tions about the Food Card pro­gramme. She said the pub­lic has been told that food cards have been made avail­able to Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, she said as of yes­ter­day morn­ing, nei­ther she nor her UNC Par­lia­men­tary col­leagues were aware of the num­ber of food cards avail­able to them for dis­tri­b­u­tion in their con­stituen­cies.

“This has placed the Op­po­si­tion MPs in an in­vid­i­ous po­si­tion where­in con­stituents are ap­proach­ing and plead­ing for food cards which are sim­ply not avail­able at this time. Can the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment in­di­cate when and what quan­tum of food cards will be ad­vanced to MPs?” she asked.

She al­so asked Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to say whether the food cards dis­trib­uted will be a stan­dard amount to each con­stituen­cy and who, oth­er than MPs, will be re­ceiv­ing food cards to dis­trib­ute.