Ke­jan Haynes

A for­mer UNC MP now claims he was propo­si­tioned by women work­ing for a par­ty col­league while he was in the par­ty.

Vas­ant Bharath made the rev­e­la­tion yes­ter­day, even as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher an­nounced that a spe­cial team had been set up to probe al­le­ga­tions that a UNC mem­ber was ac­cused of in­volve­ment in hu­man traf­fick­ing in 2012.

The is­sue was raised in a 2020 US De­part­ment of State Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons re­port, which not­ed that “se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials” were in­volved in the il­lic­it trade.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed that the “se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial” re­ferred to was, in fact, a mem­ber of the Op­po­si­tion and not a sit­ting Gov­ern­ment mem­ber.

The UNC has de­nied the al­le­ga­tion but for­mer MP, Dr De­vant Ma­haraj, has claimed the par­ty was aware of the claims and had set up a team, head­ed by Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. Mooni­lal has de­nied this claim.

US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond has since clar­i­fied that “se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials,” as re­ferred to in the re­port, is meant to mean any­one who works for the Gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Bharath joined the list of for­mer MPs seem­ing­ly ver­i­fy­ing that the il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty not on­ly took place but was well known by mem­bers of the par­ty ex­ec­u­tive.

“I was sub­ject to and propo­si­tioned by girls who were ap­par­ent­ly work­ing on be­half of some­body who is a cur­rent sit­ting Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment; and I know for a fact that oth­er Cab­i­net mem­bers had al­so been propo­si­tioned. I was told at the time the Prime Min­is­ter was aware of these ac­tiv­i­ties,” Bharath said.

Bharath al­so is­sued a me­dia re­lease on the mat­ter, say­ing, “As a coun­try, we must firm­ly re­ject hu­man traf­fick­ing and not toss it around as some po­lit­i­cal foot­ball. It is ab­hor­rent, it is re­pul­sive, and it de­stroys hu­man dig­ni­ty and, even when res­cued, vic­tims suf­fer long term phys­i­cal and men­tal health con­se­quences, with many nev­er be­ing able to lead nor­mal lives..”

He called on Gov­ern­ment to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion as rec­om­mend­ed in the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port 2022 by iden­ti­fy­ing the per­pe­tra­tors and bring­ing them to jus­tice.

Bharath’s claim and CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day came as a doc­u­ment cir­cu­lat­ing on­line pur­port­ed to rep­re­sent a PTSC in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing a TNT Mir­ror sto­ry in 2012 which al­leged a sex ring and es­cort ser­vice with­in the cor­po­ra­tion.

The com­mit­tee who con­duct­ed the re­port con­clud­ed there was no ev­i­dence un­earthed to sug­gest PTSC fa­cil­i­ties were em­ployed to fa­cil­i­tate any ac­tiv­i­ties out­side of its core busi­ness, but not­ed the de­scrip­tion of the in­di­vid­ual in­volved re­port­ed by the news­pa­per fit that of one of its em­ploy­ees.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day can­vased some oth­er for­mer UNC mem­bers to see if they knew any­thing about an in­ter­nal par­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to hu­man traf­fick­ing by a mem­ber tak­ing place around that time.

Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan said he had no knowl­edge of such an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

For­mer Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al said he had no knowl­edge of it ei­ther, but not­ed she raised con­cerns about hu­man traf­fick­ing while she was MP for a decade.

“I had this on­go­ing bat­tle with hu­man traf­fick­ing with­in the con­stituen­cy. As you know, we have about three or four broth­els there at that time, I don’t know if there’s more now or less or what has been hap­pen­ing.”

She said she had en­gaged with TTPS, the counter traf­fick­ing agen­cies and oth­er de­part­ments with­in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to deal with hu­man traf­fick­ing. She said went to court on two oc­ca­sions to try to get bar li­cens­es sus­pend­ed for cer­tain es­tab­lish­ments ac­cused of the ac­tiv­i­ty.

“So that was a mech­a­nism by which we fought and I was al­ways quite out­spo­ken both in and out of par­lia­ment on hu­man traf­fick­ing. So, you know, it is quite a dis­ap­point­ment to be see­ing all of these de­vel­op­ments in terms of what has been hap­pen­ing re­cent­ly, with re­spect to hu­man traf­fick­ing and the blame against the Op­po­si­tion and the Gov­ern­ment,” she said.

Calls to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar went unan­swered.