Gail Alexan­der

The leased Siko­rsky he­li­copter which was "parked in a shed" in Camp Cu­mu­to for five years must be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Par­lia­ment's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee af­ter the PNM Gov­ern­ment re­fused to ho­n­our the lease on the he­li­copter, says UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

Speak­ing on the is­sue at last night's UNC meet­ing, Mooni­lal said, "We’ve been read­ing about the he­li­copter leased in De­cem­ber 2014 by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ad­min­is­tra­tion. They (Gov­ern­ment) have scan­dal­ized and seek to crim­i­nal­ize all as­so­ci­at­ed with this arrange­ment.”

“But this mat­ter has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with whether Gary Grif­fith gave ‘sov­er­eign im­mu­ni­ty’ what­ev­er that means. This is about a pend­ing de­fault judg­ment in an Amer­i­can court as a naked ex­am­ple of mal­ice, in­com­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion.”

"Gov­ern­ment treat­ed a le­gal and prop­er lease con­tract en­tered by the PP as if they were deal­ing with the Biche High school or the Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal.”

“Their po­si­tion was that the PP gov­ern­ment lease a he­li­copter – 'We don’t want that!! Leave it to rot like the UWI cam­pus'," he said.

”But you can’t aban­don le­gal oblig­a­tions aris­ing from a con­tract. If the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment didn't want the damn he­li­copter, then sim­ply send it back by ter­mi­nat­ing the lease arrange­ment. We nev­er buy a he­li­copter, we leased it. It would have cost but less than $100 mil­lion that tax­pay­ers have to pay now for their spite and in­com­pe­tence.”

He said the PP leased the state-of-the-art he­li­copter for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for civil­ian or mil­i­tary use and it could have been used now when T&T bor­ders are over­run "by flee­ing" Venezue­lans.

"But for five years now a brand new spank­ing he­li­copter park up in a shed in Cu­mu­to do­ing noth­ing!!"

"Not even the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) could have gained ac­cess to the he­li­copter. So the CAA could not do in­spec­tions or pro­vide reg­is­tra­tion or air­wor­thi­ness cer­tifi­cates. This is the re­al scan­dal that de­serves a pub­lic in­quiry by the Par­lia­ment's JSC on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Bring it on!"

He said Gov­ern­ment failed to im­ple­ment any and all con­trac­tu­al con­di­tions, de­fault­ed on the lease "and now talk­ing about sov­er­eign im­mu­ni­ty."

"To­day this he­li­copter is at (Camp) Cu­mu­to, wait­ing on a scrap iron deal­er to pick it up. It can­not go back to the USA since there's no ex­port cer­tifi­cate of air­wor­thi­ness."

"In the on­go­ing mat­ter in New York, Gov­ern­ment re­fused to put in an ap­pear­ance, to file doc­u­ments or of­fer a de­fence out of spite. If T&T has to fork out $100M for this idle piece of iron, it must come from Row­ley gra­tu­ity, Stu­art Young salary and Al-Rawi rentals! Not tax­pay­ers."

Mooni­lal al­so said the state­ments of de­spair by the Deputy Chair­man of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion Board who re­signed yes­ter­day showed he could "not swal­low spit and take fi­nal emas­cu­la­tion”.

He said Gov­ern­ment was de­lib­er­ate­ly chas­ing away peo­ple with the cred­i­bil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty and ex­per­tise to man­age pro­cure­ment, "so they can even­tu­al­ly in­stall a PNM par­ty group."