Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath says he is un­fazed af­ter re­ceiv­ing threats over the can­cel­la­tions of Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­tracts.

De­spite this, he main­tains that pre­cau­tions will be tak­en to pro­tect him­self and his fam­i­ly.

Dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s Mon­day Night Re­port in Cou­va ear­li­er this week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed that Padarath, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) pro­gramme man­ag­er Fer­oze Khan had been threat­ened over the can­cel­la­tions.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Padarath con­firmed that the mat­ter was brought to his at­ten­tion by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice but did not di­vulge ad­di­tion­al de­tails on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, he said the re­sis­tance from un­der­world fig­ures was not un­ex­pect­ed, giv­en Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works, es­pe­cial­ly from ac­cess­ing pub­lic funds.

“As a pub­lic of­fi­cial who is serv­ing at the front­line of the Gov­ern­ment and mak­ing sub­stan­tial changes and ar­tic­u­lat­ing those changes, there will be push back, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the crim­i­nal el­e­ments whose source of funds is be­ing dis­rupt­ed through state con­tracts,” Padarath said.

“I swore to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion and the law with­out fear or favour, I will not be de­terred. How­ev­er, I will take pre­cau­tions to pro­tect my fam­i­ly.”

Padarath added that there were “spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols” in re­spond­ing to such mat­ters and de­clined to com­ment fur­ther.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed URP pro­gramme man­ag­er Khan, who de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter.

Phone calls and What­sApp mes­sages to Ameen went unan­swered up to press time.

Mean­while, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chair­man and for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he was al­so threat­ened dur­ing his time in of­fice, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter he ex­posed cor­rup­tion with­in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

“The lives of me and my fam­i­ly were put on threat,” he said dur­ing his ap­pear­ance on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, adding that po­lice told him crim­i­nals were be­ing used as a po­lit­i­cal tool, some­thing his par­ty would not do.

Gon­za­les al­so claimed the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tiv­i­ties would “cross paths with these gang­sters.”

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to ver­i­fy whether the po­lice were aware of these is­sues, but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to news time.