Former housing minister Dr Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde is considering to legally respond to the PNM’s Women’s League on her involvement with regards to the Vieux Fort Housing Development as she said that her name is being slandered in the process.
“Leave me out of your drama and get cracking on the serious work of national governance and development! I shall consider if to respond to the trite and pitiful release by the Women’s League of the PNM also slandering my name, in due course. It may be a legal response,” Gaynor Dick-Forde said in a statement yesterday.
PNM’s Women’s League, Lady Vice Chairman Camille Robinson Regis, in a release, said:
“The Women’s League continues to be fortified in its support of the Prime Minister’s candour, unafraid as he is to lay blame at the feet of whomsoever is responsible, even if it resides within his own party. Both former housing ministers, according to Dr Rowley, have much to answer to the people of Trinidad and Tobago for their failure to either deliver completed housing units in the first instance, or complete projects already in the ground in the case of the second,” Robinson Regis said
On Saturday, during the HDC key distribution for Vieux Fort, Rowley claimed the project had fallen prey to politics after Manning (referring to the late PM Patrick Manning) launched an investigation into missing money. Rowley recalled a public spat with Manning which he said had the result of depriving citizens of housing.
However, seeking to bring clarification, Gaynor Dick-Forde said she never told Manning $10m was missing. She described it as a slander on her that had been ongoing for ten years now.
In proving her position, Gaynor Dick-Forde said she carefully read through the Hansard of 29 September 2008 “when the current prime minister made a blistering attack on the then PNM Political Leader and Prime Minister during his budget contribution. Manning said the following in Hansard September 30th 2008 page 818: “Cleaver Heights Housing Development—I am told that I should look into this project. So, I just asked for a report from the Minister concerned and the Minister sent me this document.”
Gaynor Dick Forde said: “Note carefully that Mr Manning said he was told to look into this and he asked for a report; a report that was already in hand due to my being asked to request it from the HDC months before by another minister and long before the budget debate and accusations made against Mr Manning by the MP for Diego Martin West in the Parliament. The report was already in the hands of the minister who requested me to get it and that minister was in the Parliament with Mr Manning. I was called to the Parliament after PM was told to look into Cleaver Height project by someone else,” Gaynor Dick-Forde said.
Yesterday, while speaking to reporters following the inauguration ceremony of T&T’s first female President Paula-Mae Weekes, Rowley said his Vieux Fort comment was “very explanatory.”
“Any person who would have heard what I said and who would have followed the context of which I spoke would have understood that it doesn’t require any explanation or any polishing. I was very careful as I always try to be in choosing my words and I don’t know that I need too explain any further,” Rowley said.
On the question of whether or not his comments were an attack on anyone, Rowley replied: “I was basing my conversation on facts and history. I don’t attack people. If I treat with the issues whether they are historical, whether they are visionary, whether they are large or small issues it is not to be viewed as an attack on any person. I have quite a grasp of historical matters of which I am personally involved.”