Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chief whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has called for crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to for­mer Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Keino Cox and North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh over al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing pro­cure­ment and gov­er­nance.

Gon­za­les al­so wants the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) to ex­plain why a TTT au­di­tor who was fired last year for al­leged sex­u­al mis­con­duct was re­hired this year fol­low­ing OPM “in­struc­tions.”

“We need an­swers! These mat­ters should con­cern all of us – I beg to move!” Gon­za­les de­clared in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, pi­lot­ing a mo­tion ex­press­ing con­cern over the gov­er­nance of State en­ter­pris­es and State-con­trolled in­sti­tu­tions.

The mo­tion cit­ed re­cent re­port­ed de­vel­op­ments with­in the State en­ter­pris­es/ in­sti­tu­tions which have raised pub­lic con­cerns re­gard­ing board ap­point­ments, the con­duct of ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment and in­ad­e­quate sep­a­ra­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“This mo­tion is crit­i­cal as it calls up­on the Gov­ern­ment to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and man­age state en­ter­pris­es in a way that our in­ter­ests will be pre­served be­cause so far we have in­sta­bil­i­ty, chaos and scan­dal oc­cur­ring there!” he added.

Gon­za­les list­ed peo­ple who were dis­missed, re­moved, ter­mi­nat­ed and changed since the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s tenure, which in­cludes for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire among them.

He said in­for­ma­tion reach­ing the Op­po­si­tion al­so in­di­cat­ed that the re­moval and/or ter­mi­na­tion of WASA di­rec­tors and se­nior man­age­ment will cost tax­pay­ers over $30 mil­lion in set­tle­ments.

“And in many State en­ter­pris­es, wher­ev­er you’re see­ing move­ments at ex­ec­u­tive lev­el, in­for­ma­tion is that tax­pay­ers will have to pay over $500 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion re­gard­ing out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions and claims where il­le­gal ter­mi­na­tion of these of­fi­cers are con­cerned.”

Gon­za­les said af­ter Kent West­ern was re­moved as TSTT’s CEO and re­placed by the UNC Gov­ern­ment with Keino Cox, there’s now “all kinds of bac­cha­nal” oc­cur­ring in TSTT with al­le­ga­tions and law­suits by Cox against TSTT and vice ver­sa.

“Gov­ern­ment which hand­picked him must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as they in­ter­fered in TSTT gov­er­nance,” he added.

Gon­za­les re­count­ed a $49 mil­lion open ten­der process which was changed to a sole-se­lect con­tract, then award­ed to Hum­ming­bird Hold­ings Ltd.

He cit­ed oth­er arrange­ments by the ex-CEO with com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Wi­Pay.

Gon­za­les cit­ed doc­u­ments from an in­de­pen­dent probe “where the cir­cum­stances of the arrange­ments in TSTT will shock T&T.”

He claimed it found Cox will­ful­ly mis­led the board in its Au­gust 3, 2026 mem­o­ran­dum by se­lec­tive­ly pre­sent­ing to the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary’s code of ethics de­c­la­ra­tion on­ly the first page of the de­c­la­ra­tion but omit­ted the sec­ond page. Gon­za­les de­tailed oth­er neg­a­tive find­ings.

“I’m call­ing on the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter to seek a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­gard­ing the for­mer TSTT CEO and any­one else in­volved in this scan­dal and cor­rup­tion with­in TSTT! If the min­is­ter doesn’t, he must take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it!” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les al­so called on the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to say why the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T en­tered in­to a ten-year, $4.4 bil­lion con­tract with Wi­pay with­out a pro­cure­ment process.