Sascha Wil­son

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal wants the gov­ern­ment to ex­plain why $4.3 mil­lion in fees had been paid to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the land ac­qui­si­tion for the Point Fortin High­way when it had not start­ed.

Speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) con­ven­tion at the Cou­va South Mul­ti-Pur­pose Hall yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal re­ferred to a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle that stat­ed that the in­quiry had been de­layed by ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges.

He not­ed that re­tired judge Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, the in­quiry chair­man, who was ap­point­ed in Ju­ly 2019, had ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the in­quiry has failed to start.

“Ho­n­ourable Mr Jus­tice Ven­tour have you or mem­bers of that Com­mis­sion, in­clud­ing le­gal coun­sel, col­lect­ed any monies at all in the con­text that the Com­mis­sion has done ab­solute­ly noth­ing, there has been no pub­lic hear­ing at all, no in­ves­ti­ga­tion?” he asked.

“This gov­ern­ment is so in­com­pe­tent they can­not build the high­way and they so in­com­pe­tent they can­not in­ves­ti­gate the high­way.”

Wav­ing the news­pa­per ar­ti­cle as he spoke, Mooni­lal said he raised the is­sue be­cause in a May 2022 re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives un­der Head 13, which is the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, it was stat­ed that $4.3 mil­lion had been paid in out­stand­ing fees to the in­quiry in­to the high­way.

A copy of the re­port showed that fees of $4,293,000 had been paid “to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ment of out­stand­ing fees owed to com­mis­sion­ers and le­gal coun­sels who were ap­point­ed to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry to ex­am­ine and en­quire in­to as­pects of the man­age­ment of the land ac­qui­si­tion process car­ried out by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed with re­spect to the con­struc­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin.”

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal point­ed out, “But the Com­mis­sion did not meet. It fall apart noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, so where has the $4.3 mil­lion gone? That is the ques­tion, if they have done noth­ing,” he said.

Mooni­lal, along with oth­er speak­ers at the con­ven­tion, de­fend­ed Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship of the op­po­si­tion par­ty and her com­pe­tence in the face of crit­i­cism from de­trac­tors.

“Is ei­ther you lead, fol­low, or get out of the blast­ed way,” he told crit­ics of the UNC po­lit­i­cal leader.