How many years was the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in gov­ern­ment for af­ter the Robert Sab­ga Re­port on chil­dren's homes came out in 1997 - and what did the PNM do about the re­port in all that time?

That was Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's query yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate of the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion bill to add $3 bil­lion to the 2022 Bud­get.

Her con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate was aired at last night's UNC fo­rum.

Not­ing the 1997 Sab­ga re­port, where a six-mem­ber team led by Sab­ga found abuse at 10 chil­dren's homes, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had asked Gov­ern­ment, "What do you care for our chil­dren?"

She said Gov­ern­ment had dug up the re­port, "That goes back 25 years and you go­ing back to look for Pan­day as he was in gov­ern­ment? Out of those years, how many were you (PNM) in gov­ern­ment - what did you do with that in­fa­mous Sab­ga re­port?

"Com­ing now 25 years af­ter, witch-hunt­ing...when the ma­jor­i­ty of years you (PNM) were in of­fice. So look! No croc­o­dile tears from that Min­is­ter on these chil­dren's homes, no go­ing back 25 years - you're in charge now, do some­thing! Our chil­dren need to be safe and se­cure. We need jus­tice for those chil­dren."

Dur­ing the UNC's fo­rum, Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al ques­tioned whether re­quired due dili­gence was done and in­come de­clared to the BIR on an al­leged Ju­ly 2020 de­posit of $1.8m via cheque from a state com­pa­ny, al­leged­ly in­to the cred­it union per­son­al ac­count of a PN­Mite.

Lutch­me­di­al called for past Hous­ing Min­is­ters to an­swer on al­leged land is­sues. She sought de­tails on what po­lice did to in­ves­ti­gate the 2019 Spe­cial Branch re­port and its sta­tus.