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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Kamla: Why did Central Bank not allow Auditor General access to data?

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169 days ago
20240910
UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar holds up a copy of the Special Report of the Auditor General on the Public Accounts for the financial year 2023 during the party's cottage meeting in Chaguanas last night.

UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar holds up a copy of the Special Report of the Auditor General on the Public Accounts for the financial year 2023 during the party's cottage meeting in Chaguanas last night.

RISHI RAGOONATH

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has queried why the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) re­fused to al­low the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­quest to ex­am­ine the bank's elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem.

"What are they hid­ing? And why?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar added at Mon­day night's UNC meet­ing at Ch­agua­nas.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so list­ed 50 ini­tia­tives for the health sec­tor which a UNC gov­ern­ment would of­fer - from rein­tro­duc­ing the Ba­by Grant to ex­pand­ing the CDAP pro­gramme's phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and in­tro­duc­ing Cath labs in hos­pi­tals to en­able car­diac stent­ing on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's Spe­cial Re­port on T&T’s pub­lic ac­counts for 2023 was laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, not­ed that in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's orig­i­nal re­port on the ac­counts, al­most $3 bil­lion couldn't be ac­count­ed for.

She said the big news in the Spe­cial Re­port is that there was no change and the $3B was still "miss­ing."

"Where has it gone?" she added.

"On Mon­day I heard he (Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert) was very bad, bul­ly­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and us­ing the figleaf of Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­lege to lam­bast her be­cause she stood for the truth and she did the right thing."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment had "lam­bast­ed the poor la­dy" while the mat­ter is in court and was 'sub ju­dice." She said when the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al went to check the sit­u­a­tion to find the $3B, the Cen­tral Bank re­fused to al­low her to check the sys­tem.

"Why won't they let the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al do her job? Has the Cen­tral Bank been com­plic­it in cook­ing the books with this Gov­ern­ment? What else is the Cen­tral Bank and Gov­ern­ment hid­ing?

"They both over­saw the change of the poly­mer bills. It makes you ask if bil­lions were loot­ed and stolen dur­ing the 100-dol­lar bill changeover. We have to ask, our con­fi­dence in Cen­tral Bank has been di­min­ished. I call for an en­quiry in­to the ac­tions of the Cen­tral Bank and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the poly­mer $100 bills- we’ll do it when we re­turn to Gov­ern­ment,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Mon­day was the fi­nal sit­ting of the fourth Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment and T&T is now in an elec­tion year. But she said while Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was say­ing "no elec­tion now," act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was warn­ing PN­Mites to pre­pare for bat­tle.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Im­bert had been to­tal­ly emas­cu­lat­ed, since Young "took away" his role as PNM chair­man and then his role as act­ing PM.

"Don't be sur­prised when Bud­get de­bate starts, it might be Stu­art read­ing the Bud­get. He climb­ing all over poor lit­tle Im­bert, poor fel­la... Faris, Fos­ter and Pen­ny hang­ing on by a thread wait­ing on PNM in­ter­nal elec­tions in No­vem­ber ..." she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there is an "elec­tion bud­get" on its way this month.

"So look out for all kinds of promis­es that the PNM does not in­tend to de­liv­er."

Not­ing pro­posed leg­is­la­tion such as the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills and for Cam­paign Fi­nance re­form, which will be done in the fi­nal ses­sion of Par­lia­ment ahead, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of seek­ing to "ma­m­aguy To­bag­o­ni­ans" on the au­ton­o­my bills. She not­ed this was pre­sent­ed since 2020.

She al­so ques­tioned if three of the Prime Min­is­ter's friends had gone on the same flight as he did and if it was a med­ical check-up the PM and his friends all went on, or a "golf-up."


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