Ke­jan Haynes

Pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia blog­ger Rho­da Bharath is a con­tract em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry of Fi­nance earn­ing $30,000 a month for her ser­vices.

This was re­vealed through sev­er­al sources, in­clud­ing a re­sponse to a ques­tion in Par­lia­ment and a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

On Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert re­spond­ed to a ques­tion for writ­ten an­swer from the Op­po­si­tion, which asked: Will the min­is­ter state:

a. the po­si­tions held by Rho­da Bharath at the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) and any oth­er pub­licly fund­ed State bod­ies/agen­cies;

b. the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for each po­si­tion held; and

c. the re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age for each po­si­tion held?

The min­is­ter re­spond­ed, say­ing that Bharath was an in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor at the NL­CB in the area of com­mu­ni­ca­tions from Oc­to­ber 1, 2018 to May 31, 2020. He said Bharath held no po­si­tion with that pub­lic en­ti­ty or any oth­er pub­lic en­ti­ty.

But the writ­ten an­swer con­tin­ued, “How­ev­er, Ms Bharath pro­vides ser­vices as an in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor to the Min­istry of Fi­nance in the ar­eas of Events Plan­ning and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions from time [sic].”

Bharath was re­cent­ly seen at the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Spot­light on the Econ­o­my on Sep­tem­ber 2 at the Hy­att Re­gency.

Guardian Me­dia is in pos­ses­sion of a FOIA re­quest to the Min­istry of Fi­nance filed ear­li­er this year, which asked for the names and salaries of any com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tants em­ployed by the min­istry.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance re­spond­ed, “The Min­istry has re­tained the ser­vices of Type 1 Me­dia and Re­search So­lu­tions as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­sul­tant dur­ing the pe­ri­od April 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023, at a month­ly fee of $30,000.00.”

It’s un­clear if the con­tract is new or sim­ply a re­new­al of an old­er con­tract.

Type 1 Me­dia and Re­search So­lu­tions was reg­is­tered by Bharath at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs on No­vem­ber 3, 2017. Ac­cord­ing to its of­fi­cial fil­ing in the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry, the na­ture of the busi­ness is list­ed as a com­pa­ny in­volved in “me­dia, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and re­search strate­gies.”

The reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ment notes Bharath is al­so a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day reached out to Bharath for com­ment on how long she had been em­ployed at the min­istry and to de­scribe what her du­ties were. She de­clined to com­ment. How­ev­er, af­ter the sto­ry was pub­lished, Bharath wrote on the Newsauce Face­book page, “I couldn’t get past the first sen­tence be­cause it start­ed with a lie. There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween an em­ploy­ee and a con­sul­tant. But, I guess Ke­jan needs the clicks.”

She has not de­nied the salary.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance has three oth­er cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cers on con­tract earn­ing $18,500, $14,200 and $5,000 per month.

Bharath shot in­to promi­nence in 2016, break­ing the sto­ry of then-pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona ac­quir­ing wine bear­ing the pres­i­den­tial seal. At the time, it was seen as a mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds. The in­tense pres­sure forced Car­mona to hold a press con­fer­ence (al­most un­heard of by a Pres­i­dent) to re­spond to the ac­cu­sa­tions, which he de­nied.

Since then, Bharath has gar­nered a fol­low­ing of thou­sands through her Face­book page Newsauce.

Bharath has of­ten used her plat­form to break sto­ries and leak doc­u­ments, lead­ing many to prais­es her jour­nal­is­tic work for hav­ing all the best “sources.” She has al­so of­ten used that plat­form to crit­i­cise the work of jour­nal­ists ex­ten­sive­ly on her Face­book Live broad­casts.

Bharath is cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of sev­er­al “state” What­sApp groups meant for mem­bers of the me­dia, in­clud­ing one set up by the Par­lia­ment and one cre­at­ed by the Min­istry of Health in 2018 that was used ex­ten­sive­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the ques­tion of whether Bharath was, in fact, a jour­nal­ist, reached as far as the High Court when for­mer Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj sued the Gov­ern­ment to join the dai­ly Min­istry of Health COVID-19 brief­in­gs.

Ma­haraj com­plained that then-Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Don­na Cox was grant­i­ng ac­cess to “oth­er on­line jour­nal­ists,” in­clud­ing Bharath, Lasana Liburd (Wired868.co) and Pri­or Be­har­ry (AZP­news.com) and not him.

He said it was “an abuse of pow­er, un­fair and bi­ased.” Ma­haraj al­so al­leged favouritism and bias in favour of Bharath, whom he ac­cused of be­ing a sup­port­er of the Gov­ern­ment. Ma­haraj lost the case and Bharath even­tu­al­ly stopped at­tend­ing the Min­istry of Health brief­in­gs.