Judy Ray­mond

Vis­it­ing from the Sen­ate, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George made an ag­gres­sive maid­en speech in the Low­er House on Fri­day. Mr George was ask­ing for the wa­ter im­prove­ment rate charged to ten­ants of the Point Lisas es­tate to be in­creased. To sup­ply Point Lisas, he ex­plained, WASA must buy wa­ter from the de­sali­na­tion plant owned by De­sal­cott. The price WASA pays is ris­ing, but the price it charges con­sumers has not been in­creased. It was time to re­dress the bal­ance. Mov­ing this mo­tion in the Sen­ate last De­cem­ber, Mr George had stuck to the facts, which sound­ed straight­for­ward and un­ob­jec­tion­able. But on Fri­day, he went on the of­fen­sive, launch­ing an at­tack on Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley. As it turned out, he was tak­ing in front. When he came in­to of­fice, said Mr George, he had asked MPs about wa­ter prob­lems in their con­stituen­cies; among those who re­spond­ed was the ven­er­a­ble Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. He re­port­ed how his min­istry had brought wa­ter to Abb&ea­cute; Pou­jade, Scor­pi­on Al­ley and Covi­gne Road, all in Dr Row­ley's Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy.

Wa­ter lines had been laid in Covi­gne Road just be­fore the 2007 elec­tion, but the PNM had nev­er sup­plied any wa­ter, said Mr George. "Miss Co­ra at Covi­gne hasn't had wa­ter for 43 years." "Who's the MP there?" asked Gov­ern­ment MPs, pre­tend­ing ig­no­rance. Mr George told them. "What!" they cried in mock sur­prise. Dr Row­ley wasn't laugh­ing, though. The PNM had told the UNC Gov­ern­ment in 1999 that there would be se­ri­ous cost in­creas­es as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­sali­na­tion plant. Now the chick­ens, he re­marked grim­ly, had come home to roost. Far from be­ing in­nocu­ous, the whole is­sue, Dr Row­ley charged, was "con­ceived in in­iq­ui­ty, and its birth marked by cor­rup­tion." The de­bate un­der­went an abrupt change. What had seemed a sim­ple mat­ter was cloaked in mys­tery and malfea­sance. The con­trac­tor, the late Hafeez Kara­math, had arranged a "mar­vel­lous bid-rig­ging ex­er­cise," Dr Row­ley re­called.

Mr Kara­math had con­trived to have his man, Joseph Ben Dak, ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment on which con­trac­tor to pick for the de­sali­na­tion plant. That had been the find­ing of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Bob Lindquist and a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Then, as soon as the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice-be­fore Mr George had even warmed his new chair, said Dr Row­ley, "He did some­thing that caught my eye." WASA's new, care­ful­ly se­lect­ed CEO had been made to leave and Mr George had ap­point­ed to act in his place Gan­ga Singh-the for­mer Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, whose per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Mr George had been in 1999. As for the rate in­crease Mr George was seek­ing now, "Who are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries?" asked Dr Row­ley. "We were nev­er sat­is­fied we knew who were the re­al own­ers of the de­sali­na­tion plant." This was be­cause 25 per cent of the plant be­longed to a sub­sidiary of Mr Kara­math's com­pa­ny that had been set up in the British Vir­gin Is­lands.

Those re­quest­ing the in­crease, he spec­u­lat­ed, might them­selves be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries. "This is clas­sic cor­rup­tion," railed Dr Row­ley-and there might be more to come. De­spite protests, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie had said there was no pro­cure­ment is­sue over the In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment project. "I'm not tak­ing any as­sur­ance from you," Dr Row­ley said scorn­ful­ly. "Gan­ga Singh said all was well in 1999." Like­wise, the Trans­port Min­is­ter said there was no pro­cure­ment is­sue with re­gard to the planned light tran­sit sys­tem. "Min­is­ters are pre­tend­ing they don't un­der­stand, to cov­er up cor­rup­tion," fumed Dr Row­ley. "Nine­ty-nine per cent of cor­rup­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion is in pro­cure­ment." Dr Row­ley al­so sound­ed an­oth­er alarm: wa­ter rates might be about to rise all round, as he had dis­cov­ered when he was charged a retroac­tive 35 per cent in­crease on his wa­ter bill in To­ba­go.

"Bad news for Covi­gne and Big Yard," he com­ment­ed wry­ly. These dark clouds were swept away by the Hous­ing Min­is­ter, a sun­ny Roodal Mooni­lal. The Op­po­si­tion Leader had been re-en­er­gised, he joked, won­der­ing what might have had that ef­fect on him-an un­kind ref­er­ence to the ill­ness of Dr Row­ley's pre­de­ces­sor, Mr Man­ning. But the PNM had changed its clothes and its leader, not its DNA, he warned. They liked to "scan­dalise and drama­tise and crim­i­nalise." He poured cold wa­ter on the Op­po­si­tion Leader's ac­cu­sa­tions: what Dr Row­ley had called facts, he claimed, were on­ly the sub­ject of af­fi­davits; no one had been con­vict­ed of any crime. Then Dr Mooni­lal too went on the of­fen­sive. WASA had 2,033 ap­proved staff, but the present Gov­ern­ment had found 4,974 on its books. Un­der the PNM, the hus­band of a min­is­ter had been hired to check for leaks-"Who talk about cor­rup­tion?" asked Dr Mooni­lal. And as for per­for­mance, in its first year in of­fice, the Gov­ern­ment had fixed a ma­jor wa­ter prob­lem in Ste Madeleine, com­plet­ing the project on time and un­der bud­get, and sav­ing $186 mil­lion. For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan had re­marked that if it had been a PNM project, there would have been a cost over­run of $186 mil­lion. "And that," Dr Mooni­lal point­ed out tri­umphant­ly, "is un­der the same CEO they came to­day to drag from pil­lar to post."