Hours af­ter Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed sev­en re­put­ed gang lead­ers in North Trinidad have been ben­e­fit­ting from state con­tracts worth close to $6 mil­lion, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein has promised to launch a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter with a re­port to be sub­mit­ted on his desk next month.

The min­istry in a press re­lease was re­spond­ing to to­day's T&T Guardian's front-page ar­ti­cle head­lined "$6 Mil­lion Men" which un­earthed gang lead­ers based in com­mu­ni­ties in the Port-of-Spain and Diego Mar­tin ben­e­fit­ting from mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts over the last three years.

This in­for­ma­tion was con­tained in a con­fi­den­tial eight-page Spe­cial Branch re­port pre­pared in mid-May that was ob­tained as part of a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion just one week af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith blamed the state for plac­ing funds in the hands of gang lead­ers.

The re­lease quot­ed Ho­sein stat­ing that the min­istry viewed these al­le­ga­tions as "very se­ri­ous­ly and in­tends to ad­dress them as a mat­ter of ur­gency."

It fur­ther stat­ed that au­di­tors of the min­istry are sched­uled to com­mence an in­ves­ti­ga­tion as a mat­ter of ur­gency at all cor­po­ra­tions.

"In fact, the rel­e­vant Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cers have al­ready been con­tact­ed to pro­vide sup­port and co­op­er­a­tion to our In­ter­nal Au­dit Unit. A re­port is ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted to the min­is­ter at the end of Au­gust," Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein point­ed out there is an es­tab­lished ten­der­ing pro­ce­dure for lo­cal gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

“Each Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for award­ing con­tracts in their area. This in­cludes ad­ver­tis­ing, the ten­der­ing process and ul­ti­mate­ly the se­lec­tion of a con­trac­tor and the award of con­tracts. The Min­istry’s role is in the pro­vi­sion of fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to en­sure that projects are com­plet­ed with­in bud­get and sched­ule."

Cor­po­ra­tions, Ho­sein stat­ed are guid­ed by the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act.

"It should be not­ed that the CEOs of cor­po­ra­tions are the ac­count­ing of­fi­cers and are em­pow­ered to award con­tracts with a lim­it of au­thor­i­ty up to $300,000.00 but must do so in ac­cor­dance with prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in mind. This al­le­ga­tion of im­prop­er con­duct in ex­er­cis­ing this statu­to­ry du­ty is wor­thy of fur­ther­ance and steps shall be tak­en to dis­till the is­sues al­leged."