Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter says she has been over­whelmed by the pub­lic’s out­pour­ing of con­cern and sup­port fol­low­ing al­leged death threats against her.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­vealed that Min­is­ters Ameen, Bar­ry Padarath, Wayne Sturge and URP (Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme) pro­gramme man­ag­er Feeroze Khan had re­ceived threats on their lives.

With re­spect to Ameen, Padarath and Khan, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the threats were linked to the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to re­form and au­dit cer­tain make-work pro­grammes, such as the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

The Gov­ern­ment has made mi­nor se­cu­ri­ty ad­just­ments to pro­tect the threat­ened min­is­ters.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Ameen was asked how these de­vel­op­ments were im­pact­ing her.

The min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed that she was not in­tim­i­dat­ed by the threats. How­ev­er, she sought to point out the pub­lic’s re­ac­tion to the news.

“What I have been very warmed by is the num­ber of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who have been call­ing all of us as Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to say, ‘I am pray­ing for you, I am stand­ing with you, do not be afraid’. Those who are call­ing to say, ‘I hope you are tak­ing pre­cau­tions, be safe out there, go out there and do your job’,” she ex­plained.

Ameen be­lieves this is in­dica­tive of the peo­ple’s love for the Gov­ern­ment and their be­lief in what it is do­ing by mak­ing ad­just­ments to CEPEP and URP.

“We can­not ask to re­place a PNM feed­ing trough by re­plac­ing the PNM with UNC. The Prime Min­is­ter has been very de­lib­er­ate and firm about this, which I think is very com­mend­able. A lot of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life are com­mend­ing the Prime Min­is­ter for tak­ing that stand on many of these pro­grammes that have had cor­rup­tion, leak­ages and are just feed­ing troughs,” she said.

Ameen said funds re­cov­ered from cor­rup­tion could be bet­ter used to im­prove cit­i­zens’ qual­i­ty of life.

“You can pro­vide more in terms of bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion and health care. You can pro­vide lap­tops for chil­dren. You can have more med­ica­tion in the hos­pi­tals and bet­ter ser­vice. I think the last gov­ern­ment would have told the pop­u­la­tion tight­en your belt, when the truth is, had they tak­en the bulls by the horn and dealt with that kind of cor­rup­tion and stamped out the cor­rup­tion.”

She added, “So, I am very con­vinced that we are do­ing the right thing. I stand firm­ly with the de­ci­sion of the Prime Min­is­ter and there are sev­er­al mem­bers in the Cab­i­net that have pro­grammes with­in our min­istry that would have been used as po­lit­i­cal tools for the PNM to siphon gov­ern­ment re­sources to give to friends and fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers and as well as the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.”