UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal is call­ing for a pub­lic in­de­pen­dent en­quiry in­to the re­fur­bish­ment and con­struc­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s To­ba­go res­i­dence, af­ter its cost jumped from an ini­tial $25 mil­lion to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $63 mil­lion.

Mooni­lal made the call at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing in Port-of -Spain.

In­for­ma­tion on the res­i­dence came last Fri­day in replies to ques­tions the Op­po­si­tion raised with Gov­ern­ment about Ude­cott projects.

Mooni­lal said for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­ject­ed a $20 mil­lion es­ti­mate for con­struc­tion/re­fur­bish­ment of the res­i­dence at a time when she said T&T had prob­lems with com­mod­i­ty prices. But Mooni­lal said the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter was “para­noid” to fix the To­ba­go res­i­dence.

“They came with a ini­tial bud­get of $25 mil­lion. To­day, we can con­firm the Ude­cott cost for the Prime Min­is­ter’s To­ba­go res­i­dence is now in the vicin­i­ty of $63 mil­lion!” he added.

“They’ve cer­ti­fied to pay $48.7 mil­lion, with an­oth­er un­paid bal­ance of $15.4 mil­lion. I call for an in­de­pen­dent pub­lic en­quiry in­to the re­fur­bish­ment and con­struc­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s To­ba­go res­i­dence. Some­thing can­not have start­ed at $25 mil­lion and end­ed up at $63 mil­lion.

“The Prime Min­is­ter al­ready has an of­fi­cial res­i­dence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. A To­ba­go res­i­dence cost $63 mil­lion?”

“Who are the con­trac­tors that did work there,” he said, adding UNC will con­tin­ue to pur­sue this mat­ter to­day.

Mooni­lal al­so said Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert must say whether they were aware of and/or ap­proved the $10 mil­lion in out­stand­ing le­gal fees paid to King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, the state’s main wit­ness against for­mer PP at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Mooni­lal claimed Row­ley “must have known,” since then-AG Faris Al-Rawi “couldn’t have au­tho­rised” pay­ments for a state wit­ness on his own.

Mooni­lal al­so called on En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to say if it’s true that he spoke to Nel­son on a “crit­i­cal part” of Nel­son’s case, while both were on a Lon­don flight. Mooni­lal ac­cused Young of “tam­per­ing and med­dling with a wit­ness.”

Mooni­lal al­so called on Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes to say if she was in­volved or had knowl­edge of any par­don dis­cussed for Nel­son. He queried if Nel­son’s name was among the par­don for 60 pris­on­ers done for T&T’s 60th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary.

Mooni­lal al­so called on Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga to say why no pay­ments were made to state-owned TTT for cov­er­age of PNM po­lit­i­cal meet­ings over the last year.

He said af­ter re­ceiv­ing a re­ply to a query on rev­enue col­lect­ed by state-owned TTT from po­lit­i­cal par­ties in 2022, the in­for­ma­tion showed six PNM meet­ings from No­vem­ber 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 2022.

He said the re­ply stat­ed: “No pay­ments have been made to date.”

The re­ply on “Out­stand­ing Pay­ments” stat­ed “Not Ap­plic­a­ble.”

He ques­tioned if TTT, fund­ed by tax­pay­ers, was be­ing used as a “freeco PNM mouth­piece” and was “a con­sti­tu­tion­al arm of PNM.” He called for De No­bri­ga to ex­plain or say if this was an er­ror. De No­bri­ga didn’t re­ply to the T&T Guardian’s What­sApped queries yes­ter­day. (Gail Alexan­der)