KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says on­ly 45 per cent of CCTV cam­eras around Trinidad are work­ing.

Speak­ing at the Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day, Mooni­lal said Trinidad has 1607 CCTV cam­eras, and 730 were not func­tion­ing while oth­ers were func­tion­al with lim­i­ta­tions. He said that the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in­stalled CCTV cam­eras in To­ba­go fol­low­ing a mur­der, and out of the 189 on the is­land, 99 do not work. He said while Gov­ern­ment says it wants to fight crime, 46 per cent of CCTV cam­eras in the coun­try do not work.

Mooni­lal said he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that two of the Coast Guard cape class pa­trol ves­sels sus­tained dam­age in an ac­ci­dent at sea and are now un­der re­pair in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. Mean­while, mo­bile scan­ners ob­tained un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship for $27 mil­lion are non-func­tion­al. He said when Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith was Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, it start­ed to work.

He said peo­ple of­ten see raw footage of mur­ders on so­cial me­dia, and they show that crim­i­nals use cars to com­mit crimes. He said the mo­bile scan­ners are for the roads to de­tect il­le­gal firearms in ve­hi­cles, which could al­low po­lice to ar­rest crim­i­nals be­fore or af­ter they com­mit of­fences.

"Mr Hinds had those ma­chines for one year and could not fix them. Mr Hinds is the biggest fail­ure in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. But as a friend re­mind­ed me: You can have state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy, but if you have state-of-the-art id­iots, then the tech­nol­o­gy is worth­less."

Mooni­lal said Ude­cott re­vert­ed to the Calder Hart days where any­thing goes. He claims there is a staff mem­ber in the project man­age­ment de­part­ment who as­sess­es con­trac­tors for jobs but is al­so a con­trac­tor. He said the em­ploy­ee is on the verge of get­ting a con­tract to build a youth de­vel­op­ment cen­tre along the East-West cor­ri­dor.

"What kind of Gov­ern­ment al­lows full-time em­ploy­ees of a project man­age­ment com­pa­ny to be a con­trac­tor, com­pet­ing with the con­trac­tors he is as­sess­ing? Imag­ine this char­ac­ter work­ing in Ude­cott, as­sess­ing bids from peo­ple who com­pete with him on an­oth­er project. That is hap­pen­ing un­der the eyes of Noel Gar­cia and Kei­th Row­ley."

Mooni­lal said the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship im­ple­ment­ed 84 per cent of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Uff Re­port for an­ti-cor­rup­tion re­form. Mean­while, he said the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (RDC) is shar­ing ten­ders like "nuts and dou­bles" with­out process, ac­count­ing and trans­paren­cy.

Mooni­lal re­called that the main cham­ber of the Red House de­vel­oped a leak months af­ter it re­opened in 2020. Mem­bers moved to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion to ac­com­mo­date re­pairs. He said de­spite a re­turn to the cham­ber set for last De­cem­ber, it re­mains un­der re­pair six months lat­er, and the ceil­ing of the tem­po­rary room shows signs of de­vel­op­ing a leak. Mooni­lal said he learned that the con­trac­tor en­gaged in the re­me­di­al work was the same one who built the roof and charged dou­ble the cost.

Mooni­lal said the con­tract for the con­struc­tion of the Port-of-Spain Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block ex­pired in March, with on­ly 50 per cent of the work com­plet­ed. He said the work con­tin­ues at the site, and al­though the con­tract stip­u­lates the con­trac­tor pays $50,000 per day if the work does not fin­ish on time, Ude­cott does not charge the con­trac­tor.

“Why? Is that con­trac­tor con­nect­ed to Bal­isi­er House?”

Mooni­lal said he would hold Ude­cott and the RDC to ac­count for more in the com­ing days.