SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

A war of words has erupt­ed be­tween the PNM’s nom­i­nee for Ch­agua­nas East, Richie Sookhai, and the present MP for the area, the UNC’s Van­dana Mo­hit over the rep­re­sen­ta­tion con­stituents have been re­ceiv­ing.

Sookhai, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works, was se­lect­ed by the PNM to con­test the seat in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

On Mon­day, Sookhai was on a walk­a­bout in the En­ter­prise com­mu­ni­ty hear­ing the con­cerns of res­i­dents and what they would want their MP to ad­dress. He be­gan his cam­paign last week.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia as he walked, Sookhai said bad roads and poor drainage were the ma­jor com­plaints he was get­ting from res­i­dents.

“Each re­gion should have a na­tion­al drainage and road di­vi­sion where they will con­cen­trate on that par­tic­u­lar area in terms of de­vel­op­ing these or­phan roads and drains that seem to be pop­ping up over time. You have to have a plan, you can’t just (be) run­ning box drains up­on box drains not built to specs (spec­i­fi­ca­tions). That is what is hap­pen­ing, and then af­ter ex­pect­ing to solve the prob­lem, that is not solv­ing the prob­lem. That is just pass­ing the buck down the road,” he said.

He added some in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues can be dealt with by the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. How­ev­er, he claimed res­i­dents were get­ting piece­meal de­vel­op­ment.

Sookhai crit­i­cised op­po­si­tion politi­cians for pri­ori­tis­ing self-pro­mo­tion over ad­dress­ing the re­al is­sues af­fect­ing the pub­lic.

“Are they re­al­ly look­ing at them­selves and prob­a­bly the lead­er­ship of the par­ty that re­al­ly rep­re­sents the peo­ple that are in need?”

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit ac­cused Sookhai of hood­wink­ing the vot­ers.

“It is pass­ing strange that the PNM nom­i­nee for the Ch­agua­nas East con­stituen­cy is sud­den­ly voic­ing the con­cerns of En­ter­prise since he has of­fi­cial­ly launched his cam­paign for the said con­stituen­cy. Why, on his se­lec­tion as sen­a­tor and el­e­va­tion to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port as the ju­nior min­is­ter, and be­ing very fa­mil­iar and in­ti­mate with the re­gion both as a res­i­dent and long-stand­ing cham­ber head, such ob­ser­va­tions were not pub­licly ar­tic­u­lat­ed? This re­cent PNM con­vert and of­fice seek­er is sim­ply at­tempt­ing to hood­wink the peo­ple of En­ter­prise for his nar­row po­lit­i­cal gains. How­ev­er, the peo­ple of En­ter­prise are well aware of his true feel­ings for their plight,” Mo­hit said.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed al­so wad­ed in­to Sookhai yes­ter­day, ac­cus­ing him of putting on a show.

“If he tru­ly wants to ad­dress the needs of Ch­agua­nas, per­haps he should fo­cus on some­thing that’s ac­tu­al­ly with­in his port­fo­lio, like the mas­sive traf­fic is­sues fac­ing res­i­dents mov­ing east to west. Ch­agua­nas has yet to see any tan­gi­ble ben­e­fit from his as­cen­sion to this role, de­spite his roots in the area,” he charged.

The UNC has not yet an­nounced its prospec­tive can­di­dates for the area.