Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les is al­leg­ing that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) fleet of 51 new elec­tric pa­trol ve­hi­cles was not pur­chased out­right by the State but in­stead leased through a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar arrange­ment with a com­pa­ny in­cor­po­rat­ed short­ly af­ter last year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing in Arou­ca on Thurs­day night, Gon­za­les claimed the ve­hi­cles un­veiled with much fan­fare last month are owned by a pri­vate com­pa­ny, which he said has links to an­oth­er firm that has al­ready ben­e­fit­ed from Gov­ern­ment con­tracts, in­clud­ing one cur­rent­ly un­der scruti­ny.

“I want to tell the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, be care­ful, do not al­low your of­fice to be pros­ti­tut­ed by po­lit­i­cal jezebels,” he said.

“They leased those ve­hi­cles to the tune of mil­lions of dol­lars with­out pro­cure­ment to this com­pa­ny that has a di­rect link, guess what, to none oth­er than Ramhit,” Gon­za­les al­leged.

The for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter iden­ti­fied the com­pa­ny he claimed owns the fleet as Aeonx In­dus­tries Ltd, with a Cer­tifi­cate of In­cor­po­ra­tion dat­ed June 3, 2025.

The di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny are the same three Ramhits —Ryan An­dre Ramhit, Nan­da Nand­lal Ramhit and Roopc­hand Nar­ine Ramhit—list­ed as di­rec­tors of Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd.

That com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the Al­lam­by Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in a deal with new­ly formed State en­ti­ty Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

That $100 mil­lion arrange­ment is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion af­ter claims that Land­mark­TT did not fol­low prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures.

The 51 ve­hi­cles rep­re­sent the first batch of elec­tric ve­hi­cles to be added to the TTPS fleet.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les crit­i­cised Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, sug­gest­ing that se­nior of­fi­cials had an oblig­a­tion to pro­vide greater trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing the trans­ac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse to the al­le­ga­tions from Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter de­clined to take ques­tions from re­porters dur­ing an event in St Clair and walked away as jour­nal­ists at­tempt­ed to ques­tion him about the claims.