An un­re­solved is­sue be­tween a com­pa­ny linked to Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings and the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion over the ex­ca­va­tion and re­moval of dirt from land in In­di­an Trail, Cou­va, has left some vil­lagers up­set. Back in Feb­ru­ary, the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion served Cum­mings' com­pa­ny, Pi­cal Ser­vices with a dis­con­tin­u­ance no­tice, ef­fec­tive­ly bar­ring his com­pa­ny from car­ry­ing out works at the site of the In­di­an Trail Recre­ation Grounds.

While the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion said it just wants the de­tails to ap­prove the works, Cum­mings is blam­ing "cheap pol­i­tics" for the stalled project.

The field it­self, lo­cat­ed next to the Bread of Life church, is dug up, lit­tered with rub­bish and ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing and has mounds of dirt piled in dif­fer­ent spaces.

This was sup­posed to be the grounds for the In­di­an Trail res­i­dents to have a space for recre­ation, in­stead, it's a dirt heap.

Ac­cord­ing to the pro­file on Cum­mings' min­is­te­r­i­al page, he is de­scribed as a "na­tive of In­di­an Trail, Cou­va."

The is­sue be­tween the par­ties stems from the lack of in­for­ma­tion giv­en by Pi­cal to the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion about the scope of works and what it planned to do with the soil it was mov­ing off the land.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments re­ceived by the Sun­day Guardian, the dis­con­tin­u­ance no­tice from the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Cor­po­ra­tion was served to Pi­cal Ser­vices of­fice at 140 South­ern Main Road in Cou­va, back in Feb­ru­ary, and was re­ceived and signed by Abi­o­la Cum­mings.

The Sun­day Guardian called all four of­fice num­bers list­ed for Pi­cal last week and they were all dis­con­nect­ed. The Sun­day Guardian al­so reached out to Cum­mings via What­sApp mes­sages on Wednes­day and Thurs­day but he did not re­spond.

By Thurs­day, this re­porter re­ceived a call from Mau­reen James, sec­re­tary of the In­di­an Trail Vil­lage Coun­cil. James said that she "un­der­stood" that ques­tions were be­ing asked about the sus­pend­ed work at the grounds.

When told that the Sun­day Guardian had a let­ter which showed that Cum­mings' com­pa­ny was sus­pend­ed from the works be­cause it was il­le­gal, James said, "Il­le­gal? Noth­ing il­le­gal was hap­pen­ing."

She then asked for an email ad­dress and sent a me­dia re­lease de­fend­ing Cum­mings' com­pa­ny and the work at the recre­ation grounds.

"These are the facts: The vil­lagers of In­di­an Trail, Cou­va, have been with­out recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties for decades. Over 30 years ago, Ca­roni (1975) Ltd made avail­able a par­cel of land for a recre­ation­al ground for the com­mu­ni­ty. No work was ever done by the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to de­vel­op these lands and pro­vide a recre­at­ing ground for the com­mu­ni­ty."

In 2019 the Vil­lage Coun­cil de­cid­ed to un­der­take a vol­un­tary work pro­gramme to es­tab­lish a recre­ation ground on the land and ap­proached "sev­er­al busi­ness­es." They said that two com­pa­nies re­spond­ed–Pi­cal Ser­vices and En­vi­rotech Ltd.

"A let­ter was writ­ten to the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion ad­vis­ing them of our plans for this com­mu­ni­ty project. They re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion and gave ver­bal ap­proval to pro­ceed," the Vil­lage Coun­cil said.

It said that "from time to time" rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion vis­it­ed the site to mon­i­tor the work be­ing con­duct­ed us­ing the equip­ment do­nat­ed by Pi­cal Ser­vices.

Work, they said, stalled in 2020 and 2021 be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. The work restart­ed in Jan­u­ary 2022 and by Feb­ru­ary the stop no­tice was is­sued.

The Vil­lage Coun­cil said that its "dream to de­vel­op a recre­ation ground for use by the vil­lagers has been dashed."

By Sat­ur­day Cum­mings re­spond­ed.

"This was a com­mu­ni­ty project that dates back to 2019 for which the Vil­lage Coun­cil in In­di­an Trail re­quest­ed as­sis­tance from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. At the time I was still in busi­ness and we agreed to do­nate some equip­ment to as­sist," he said.

"The UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion has cho­sen to stop the project and en­gage in cheap pol­i­tics much to the dis­ad­van­tage of the vil­lagers."

When asked if he would con­sid­er abid­ing by the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion's call for more de­tails and con­tin­ue with the project when ap­proved, Cum­mings said that he "can­not speak on be­half of the com­pa­ny but the Vil­lage Coun­cil can ap­proach the man­age­ment."

Chair­man: No­tice giv­en for unau­tho­rised en­gi­neer­ing ex­ca­va­tion/con­struc­tion

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress coun­cil­lor Hen­ry Awong, chair­man of the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion said on Thurs­day that the dis­con­tin­u­ance no­tice had noth­ing to do with the cre­ation of recre­ation space and more to do with the re­moval of dirt. The dis­con­tin­u­ance no­tice was served to stop "unau­tho­rised en­gi­neer­ing ex­ca­va­tion/con­struc­tion" at the grounds.

It forced Pi­cal to "im­me­di­ate­ly dis­con­tin­ue the unau­tho­rised and un­su­per­vised works, which are be­ing car­ried out with­out the ap­proval of the Cou­va/ Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion."

Awong said his chief con­cern was that the dirt was be­ing re­moved from the site and they were in the dark about where it was go­ing be­cause there was no plan sub­mit­ted to the cor­po­ra­tion.

"Let me be clear, we would have ap­proved it but it was done in­cor­rect­ly," he said.

He said that with­out a scope of work for the project, the cor­po­ra­tion had no idea what was go­ing on or where the dirt was tak­en to or even what was done with it.

"We knew noth­ing and the vil­lage coun­cil can­not make a de­ci­sion to bring in some­one to do vol­un­teer work with­out the cor­po­ra­tion giv­ing a go-ahead," he said.

Awong said the cor­po­ra­tion ap­proached Pi­cal for in­for­ma­tion on the planned works to give the for­mal ap­proval but they have not heard back from the com­pa­ny.

"When they re­turn with that plan, we'd take it from there," he said

On­ly two agen­cies can ap­prove works

There are on­ly two agen­cies that can ap­prove works on the recre­ation grounds, the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion or the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, the mat­ter was raised in Par­lia­ment. MP for Cou­va South Rudy In­dars­ingh asked whether any "con­tract for the up­grade of the In­di­an Trail Recre­ation Ground" had been award­ed.

At that time, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­spond­ed on be­half of the ab­sent min­is­ter and said that the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment "has not award­ed any con­tract for the up­grade of the In­di­an Trail Recre­ation Ground."

He al­so not­ed then that the ground was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Oth­er land is­sues plagu­ing Cum­mings

This is not the on­ly land is­sue still plagu­ing the min­is­ter.

Cum­mings did con­firm in ear­li­er re­ports that he owned two parcels of land which he pur­chased from the lease­hold­er. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Cum­mings pur­chased the land from a la­dy who held a 199-year lease on the state lands

But ac­cord­ing to the HDC gov­ern­ing by-laws, HDC lands can­not be sold un­less ap­proved by the HDC it­self.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to for­mer min­is­ter of hous­ing Pene­lope Beck­les about the sale of the land, but she did not re­spond. The Sun­day Guardian al­so reached out to cur­rent Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is about the same thing and there was al­so no re­sponse.

The HDC ex­ec­u­tive di­rect­ed ques­tions to the for­mer chair­man New­man George who was ap­point­ed as HDC chair­man from 2015 un­til he demit­ted of­fice in 2019.

George too did not re­spond to ques­tions on the mat­ter.

BOX as a sep­a­rate sto­ry

On Spe­cial Branch re­port... 'The mat­ter is re­ceiv­ing the at­ten­tion of the court'

Mean­while, Fos­ter Cum­mings will not be ad­dress­ing the Spe­cial Branch, which named him part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to two com­pa­nies and the award of con­tracts.

When asked about the is­sue yes­ter­day, Cum­mings said, "the mat­ter is now re­ceiv­ing the at­ten­tion of the court."

On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­dressed the mat­ter at length and di­rect­ed the me­dia to ask Cum­mings about the po­lice re­port, even as he was be­ing di­rect­ed by the Op­po­si­tion to take ac­tion against his Min­is­ter.

While in­sist­ing that he was not de­fend­ing any­one, the Prime Min­is­ter said that a Spe­cial Branch re­port was an in­tel­li­gence doc­u­ment, not an ev­i­den­tial one, and as such, it re­quired fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore any de­ci­sion could be made about its con­tents.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that the con­tents of a Spe­cial Branch re­port could be just an "ar­bi­trary ob­ser­va­tion" and need­ed fur­ther in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Row­ley al­so slammed the Op­po­si­tion for bring­ing the de­tails of a Spe­cial Branch re­port in­to the pub­lic do­main, say­ing that it was the first time one was used that way.

Cum­mings has re­mained mum on the re­port that was raised on the UNC plat­form by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, but he did is­sue a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter. Cum­mings de­mand­ed an apol­o­gy, a re­trac­tion and com­pen­sa­tion from Lutch­me­di­al.