Gail Alexan­der

While Gov­ern­ment says the $40 mil­lion NP truck­ing con­tract has not been award­ed, there is ev­i­dence that the ex­ist­ing con­trac­tor, CDS Ltd, has been ter­mi­nat­ed and put on a month-to-month con­tract, PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds has said. In the Sen­ate on Tues­day, Hinds read out an April 21, 2011, let­ter from the Sec­re­tary of the Ten­ders Com­mit­tee of NP to Prem­nath Din­di­al, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of CDS Trans­port Lim­it­ed. It stat­ed: "We are pleased to ad­vise that your cur­rent con­tract for the lease of 20 trac­tors has been ex­tend­ed un­der the ex­ist­ing terms and con­di­tions from 2011, Jan­u­ary 1 to April 30, 2011, and there­after from month- to-month."

Hinds said the let­ter demon­strat­ed that CDS' con­tract has been ter­mi­nat­ed with ef­fect from April 30.

He added: "I look for­ward to the Gov­ern­ment com­ing clean on the CDS trans­port is­sue with NP. If not, we will dig it out by way of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) leg­is­la­tion. "I as­sure the Gov­ern­ment we're not pre­pared to take their word for grant­ed about those mat­ters. We will con­tin­ue to pur­sue this to the end."

Hinds was con­tribut­ing to the Hu­man Traf­fick­ing Bill fol­low­ing state­ments in the Sen­ate by Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship MP Roodal Mooni­lal re­gard­ing a Tu­na­puna house where the Prime Min­is­ter had stayed last year and a $40 mil­lion NP con­tract for which CDS had bid. The Op­po­si­tion claims the own­er of the Tu­na­puna house, who al­so ten­dered for the NP con­tract, was the pre­ferred bid­der and may get it.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­firmed she is "friends" with the Tu­na­puna house­own­er, Ralph Gop­ual, at whose prop­er­ty she stayed af­ter the elec­tion last year. On Tues­day, Mooni­lal called on Hinds to cease and de­sist from state­ments on the is­sue, How­ev­er, in a sub­se­quent de­bate on the Hu­man Traf­fick­ing Bill, Hinds per­sist­ed and read out the let­ter. Speak­ing about the con­tract is­sue, Hinds added: If a man, for ex­am­ple, has 20 trucks and is earn­ing his in­come le­git­i­mate­ly by haul­ing gas and diesel for NP and he does this for the last ten years to earn a le­git­i­mate in­come, out of the blue, a friend of some­body in the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers the le­git­i­mate in­come is worth $40 mil­lion and they want to cap­i­talise on it, (and) says to their friends high up in the Gov­ern­ment, 'I would like that con­tract.'"

Hinds con­tin­ued: "This hard-work­ing cit­i­zen, who has been do­ing that work for ten years, pur­chased his trucks and ser­vices them, sud­den­ly finds the con­tract is be­ing tak­en away from him when he re­mained the low­est bid­der and it is of­fered vir­tu­al­ly to a friend of some­one in the Gov­ern­ment... well, not a friend, an ac­quain­tance." He added: "I say an ac­quain­tance, be­cause a spokesper­son for the friend high up in the Gov­ern­ment would have told cit­i­zens the friend of the per­son high up in the Gov­ern­ment is not re­al­ly a friend but an ac­quain­tance. "It leaves us to won­der who would oc­cu­py the house of an ac­quain­tance for three months, just so."Sup­pose the busi­ness­man finds that the home­own­er/ac­quain­tance is now be­ing of­fered the con­tract to haul the gas and the diesel..."

"We ab­solute­ly re­ject the dis­hon­esty of the Gov­ern­ment when they pre­tend to of­fer open­ness, hon­esty, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty, trans­paren­cy and new pol­i­tics and they con­duct them­selves against hard-work­ing cor­po­rate cit­i­zens like CDS Trans­port Lim­it­ed," he said. Dis­miss­ing Mooni­lal's call to "cease and de­sist," Hinds said he was ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent. He added: "My job is to call the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count, to hold them to scruti­ny on be­half of the pub­lic. "We will find you want­i­ng and we will ex­pose your hideous face to the peo­ple as we are du­ty bound to do and no­body must com­mand me to cease and de­sist, dat is my wuk."