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Monday, July 14, 2025

Cummings hits back at Watts

by

19 days ago
20250625
PNM General Secretary Foster Cummings during a media conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

PNM General Secretary Foster Cummings during a media conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The for­mer min­is­ter of the now de­funct Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYDNS) is hit­ting back at the pletho­ra of al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial wastage, favouritism and cor­rup­tion made against him by Sports and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts.

In ve­he­ment­ly deny­ing all claims yes­ter­day, Fos­ter Cum­mings in turn ac­cused Watts and the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to cre­ate a smoke­screen to mask their plan to scrap the youth pro­grammes start­ed by his for­mer min­istry.

The Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor said he is al­so un­both­ered by the min­is­ter’s promise to send the ev­i­dence he has to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate in the Low­er House to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) on Mon­day, Watts, who de­feat­ed Cum­mings in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion in the con­stituen­cy of La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, said he has in­for­ma­tion that Cum­mings green­light­ed sev­er­al short-term con­tracts pri­or to the elec­tion. He claimed Cum­mings al­so hired sev­er­al Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­bers to po­si­tions com­mand­ing salaries of over $20,000 a month al­though they were un­qual­i­fied to hold those po­si­tion. Watts said he al­so has ev­i­dence the min­istry’s youth car­a­vans start­ed to cost tax­pay­ers around $400,000 per event in the lead-up to the elec­tion.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Cum­mings said the ac­cu­sa­tions were a dis­trac­tion be­cause Gov­ern­ment was plan­ning to cut over 30 pro­grammes start­ed un­der his min­istry.

“You have the min­is­ter talk­ing about an au­dit. And fine, you can do an au­dit. It’s pub­lic funds. And you’re en­ti­tled to au­dit. But in the mean­time, do not try to hide be­hind all of these ex­cus­es, be­cause your re­al in­ten­tion is to shut down these pro­grammes,” Cum­mings con­tend­ed.

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tion that he hired sev­er­al peo­ple un­der short-term con­tracts, Cum­mings said, “You see, a lot of the new min­is­ters don’t un­der­stand the process. Clear­ly, this min­is­ter does not un­der­stand the process in the pub­lic ser­vice for re­cruit­ment, em­ploy­ment, and pay­ment of staff. A min­is­ter can­not hire any­one, and I cer­tain­ly couldn’t hire any­body. Maybe that’s what they’re do­ing now.”

In de­fence of the PNM mem­bers hired to the min­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, Cum­mings said they were all ad­e­quate­ly qual­i­fied and be­ing af­fil­i­at­ed with the PNM should not dis­qual­i­fy them for a job.

“An­tho­ny Gar­cia is a for­mer prin­ci­pal of Fa­ti­ma. He is a for­mer min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment. He is a for­mer head of TTUTA, a for­mer mem­ber of par­lia­ment. And if we talk about youth de­vel­op­ment and youth train­ing, Mr Gar­cia was work­ing on the re­open­ing of the youth camps. With a track record like that, who bet­ter to ad­vise us?”

With re­spect to the cost of youth car­a­vans, Cum­mings said he was un­aware of the fi­nances be­hind the ini­tia­tive, but said in do­ing the math, that fig­ure ap­pears to be val­ue for mon­ey.

“If it did cost that amount, well, then it’s mon­ey well spent. Yeah, it’s a mas­sive event. I’m sur­prised that that is the cost. Be­cause when you look at the op­er­a­tion, I’m sur­prised. This is mon­ey well spent for the young peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Cum­mings said.

Sit­ting near­by, his col­league, Faris Al-Rawi, made some cal­cu­la­tions and said the car­a­vans tar­get­ed at least 1,500 young peo­ple per vis­it. He said that works out to around $260 per per­son for an ini­tia­tive that pro­vid­ed food and trans­port.

Cum­mings said he be­lieves Watts, who was his for­mer con­stituen­cy chair­man be­fore de­fect­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, is cre­at­ing un­truths in an at­tempt to re­tal­i­ate for what he in­sin­u­at­ed was a blow to Watts’ pri­vate busi­ness ven­tures.

“There’s a project called the La Hor­quet­ta Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter, where a con­trac­tor was as­signed since 2020, a project that was sup­posed to last 12 months. In 2025, that project re­mained in­com­plete, and the Ude­coTT had to ter­mi­nate the con­trac­tor from that site to bring in an­oth­er con­trac­tor to com­plete that project.”

Cum­mings said this was just one ex­am­ple of the con­trac­tor be­ing pe­nalised for in­com­plete work.

“The same con­trac­tor, who is now a min­is­ter, stand­ing like Pon­tius Pi­late in the par­lia­ment yes­ter­day and talk­ing about reck­less spend­ing.”

Min­is­ter re­sponds

Con­tact­ed for his re­sponse on this, Watts said he was man­ag­ing di­rec­tor for the com­pa­ny - Sphinx Con­struc­tion - in­volved in the projects. How­ev­er, he said the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre was not com­plet­ed due to Ude­coTT’s fail­ure to pay on time.

“They were drag­ging with pay­ing us on the project, so we had to slow it down like any oth­er con­trac­tor, but when we reached 95 per cent com­ple­tion of the project, they chose to ter­mi­nate. Ask your­self where in Trinidad and To­ba­go they ter­mi­nate a con­trac­tor at 95 per cent com­ple­tion, es­pe­cial­ly when they can­not pay the con­trac­tor their in­ter­im pay­ments on time.”

Watts said this does not af­fect his abil­i­ty to call out the cor­rup­tion he’s so far un­earthed.

“There’s no rea­son for me to mix the two. Right now, I am do­ing Gov­ern­ment busi­ness. I’m re­spon­si­ble for our min­istry and I will raise any dis­crep­an­cies that I see in the min­istry. It is my du­ty to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to do that, and I do my due dili­gence and what­ev­er I would have come to Par­lia­ment with, I would have facts to back it up,” Watts said, adding the in­for­ma­tion has al­ready been hand­ed over to the AG.

Watts said it was al­so false to ac­cuse Gov­ern­ment of seek­ing to close down youth pro­grammes.

“Have you heard of any ini­tia­tive that was closed down un­der the min­istry as yet? All the pro­grammes are still alive.”


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