Adri­an Boodan

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day is call­ing on PNM coun­cil­lors in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to work to­geth­er with the UNC to get rid of Ch­agua­nas May­or Natasha Navas and the PNM. Pan­day's com­ments came when he paid a cour­tesy call on PNM coun­cil­lor for En­ter­prise, Ronald Heera, yes­ter­day.

He was tak­ing a mid-morn­ing break from meet­ing more than 40 con­stituents of Ch­agua­nas West who had come to see him at the of­fices of the Ch­agua­nas Deputy May­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar. Heera re­fused to com­ment, how­ev­er. Pan­day said the cor­po­ra­tion was not di­vid­ed in­to three po­lit­i­cal group­ings, but two, since he viewed the PNM and the Ram­jack fac­tion as one en­ti­ty.

A smil­ing Pan­day walked cool­ly and com­fort­ably in­to the Cum­ber­batch Street venue at about 9.45 am. When asked if he planned to vis­it the may­or, Pan­day said: "If I want to go to a pup­pet show, I go to the cir­cus." He said he could go any­where in T&T be­cause he was the Op­po­si­tion Leader for the en­tire coun­try.

Deputy May­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar said Navas' strings were now be­ing pulled by for­mer PNM sen­a­tor and min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Satish Ram­roop, who is be­ing paid by the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to act as Navas' per­son­al as­sis­tant. "He is a re­ject­ed, dis­card­ed gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor and he is now em­ployed in the may­or's of­fice as an ad­vis­er/per­son­al as­sis­tant...The PNM have fur­ther pen­e­trat­ed in­to the bor­ough," he said. Ram­roop lat­er told the Guardian that he was not pulling Navas' strings, but as an as­sis­tant and ad­vis­er would sit in at meet­ings.

San­i­ta­tion work­ers ask Bas for help

Pan­day first met with a group of dis­grun­tled san­i­ta­tion work­ers, some of whom had been wait­ing from 7 am to see him. The con­tract work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed from the cor­po­ra­tion be­cause of the lack of funds. They had been work­ing on a month-to-month ba­sis for the past five years. Pan­day said he could give no guar­an­tees since the UNC was not in pow­er. He said the peo­ple vis­it­ing him came with prob­lems vary­ing from job loss to the lack of in­fra­struc­ture in the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy.

Navas blames Ram­bachan

Navas, who said she was get­ting a "hard time" from the me­dia, did not go to see Pan­day, but wel­comed his ef­forts to help the work­ers. She said for­mer may­or Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan was in­formed of the prob­lem of fund­ing for con­tract work­ers in Jan­u­ary and March, and did not break the work­ers' con­tracts when it be­came nec­es­sary to do so. She said: "Mr Ram­bachan knew about this. The ac­counts de­part­ment told him on and on...even at the coun­cil meet­ings it was said to him that the funds were in the red. "When I came in­to the may­or­ship, we had noth­ing in place to deal with the con­tract work­ers be­ing sent home."

Su­ruj: I would have sent home no one

Ram­bachan said Navas should get down to the busi­ness of sav­ing the jobs of the burgess­es. The oust­ed may­or said the con­tract work­ers would have gone home a long time ago. But, un­der his stew­ard­ship, he said, the bor­ough found $209,000 to fund the con­tract work­ers through very pru­dent man­age­ment. "Navas does not un­der­stand what is go­ing on...If I was there, no one would have gone home. I would have found ways to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity," he said.