Kevon Felmine

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley agrees with Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts that for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan was re­moved from that min­istry for sur­round­ing her­self with PNM ad­vis­ers.

Row­ley's sen­ti­ment came at Wednes­day night's PNM meet­ing in Cou­va. He said, "One of the per­sons who is lead­ing the charge to be­come leader of the COP, which is a main com­po­nent in the coali­tion, is cam­paign­ing on the fol­low­ing ground. And the ground is that the min­is­ter of en­er­gy lost her port­fo­lio be­cause she did not fire PNM peo­ple." Row­ley said Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­er­cised good min­is­te­r­i­al judg­ment when she em­ployed a group of tech­nocrats to in­ves­ti­gate the award of a $40 mil­lion con­tract to Gopaul and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed from Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um.

He ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of send­ing in a hatch­et man to dis­band the com­mit­tee formed by Seep­er­sad-Bachan. Since then, Row­ley said, no one has been called to ac­count.

He was crit­i­cal al­so of the dis­missal of An­drew Jupiter and Frank Look Kin from NP say­ing that they were high­ly qual­i­fied for their po­si­tions. Row­ley said Jupiter was one of the few en­er­gy ex­perts in the coun­try and if any­one could mim­ic his achieve­ments, their fam­i­ly would be proud. Jupiter, a for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of En­er­gy, was de­scribed as the coun­try's num­ber one tech­no­crat in the pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Jupiter func­tioned un­der NAR, PNM and UNC ad­min­is­tra­tions dur­ing the course of his ca­reer ac­cord­ing to Row­ley but was fired for be­ing per­ceived to be a PNM mem­ber.

He said Lennox Sankers­ingh and Reesa Mo­hammed who were from the NAR and UNC cloth re­spec­tive­ly held high man­age­r­i­al po­si­tions un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to reshuf­fle the Cab­i­net al­so came un­der heavy crit­i­cism as Row­ley said it was a dis­trac­tion away from the Jack Warn­er probe by FI­FA. He al­so dis­played news­pa­per clip­pings with re­ports on new­ly ap­point­ed Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj. One such clip­ping car­ried com­ments made at the time Ma­haraj was CEO of Ra­dio Jagri­ti in which he said, Hin­dus in Trinidad and To­ba­go were be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Row­ley al­so ques­tioned Ma­haraj's past con­duct and asked why out of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple in the coun­try, the Prime Min­is­ter picked him to head a new min­istry.

Al­so tak­ing the po­si­tion was for­mer PSA pres­i­dent and now Labour Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the PNM Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus. She said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing the na­tion down a slip­pery slope and that T&T was be­com­ing a com­ic strip coun­try.