While Government says the $40 million NP trucking contract has not been awarded, there is evidence that the existing contractor, CDS Ltd, has been terminated and put on a month-to-month contract, PNM Senator Fitzgerald Hinds has said. In the Senate on Tuesday, Hinds read out an April 21, 2011, letter from the Secretary of the Tenders Committee of NP to Premnath Dindial, managing director of CDS Transport Limited. It stated: "We are pleased to advise that your current contract for the lease of 20 tractors has been extended under the existing terms and conditions from 2011, January 1 to April 30, 2011, and thereafter from month- to-month."
Hinds said the letter demonstrated that CDS' contract has been terminated with effect from April 30.
He added: "I look forward to the Government coming clean on the CDS transport issue with NP. If not, we will dig it out by way of the Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation. "I assure the Government we're not prepared to take their word for granted about those matters. We will continue to pursue this to the end."
Hinds was contributing to the Human Trafficking Bill following statements in the Senate by People's Partnership MP Roodal Moonilal regarding a Tunapuna house where the Prime Minister had stayed last year and a $40 million NP contract for which CDS had bid. The Opposition claims the owner of the Tunapuna house, who also tendered for the NP contract, was the preferred bidder and may get it.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has confirmed she is "friends" with the Tunapuna houseowner, Ralph Gopual, at whose property she stayed after the election last year. On Tuesday, Moonilal called on Hinds to cease and desist from statements on the issue, However, in a subsequent debate on the Human Trafficking Bill, Hinds persisted and read out the letter. Speaking about the contract issue, Hinds added: If a man, for example, has 20 trucks and is earning his income legitimately by hauling gas and diesel for NP and he does this for the last ten years to earn a legitimate income, out of the blue, a friend of somebody in the Government considers the legitimate income is worth $40 million and they want to capitalise on it, (and) says to their friends high up in the Government, 'I would like that contract.'"
Hinds continued: "This hard-working citizen, who has been doing that work for ten years, purchased his trucks and services them, suddenly finds the contract is being taken away from him when he remained the lowest bidder and it is offered virtually to a friend of someone in the Government... well, not a friend, an acquaintance." He added: "I say an acquaintance, because a spokesperson for the friend high up in the Government would have told citizens the friend of the person high up in the Government is not really a friend but an acquaintance. "It leaves us to wonder who would occupy the house of an acquaintance for three months, just so."Suppose the businessman finds that the homeowner/acquaintance is now being offered the contract to haul the gas and the diesel..."
"We absolutely reject the dishonesty of the Government when they pretend to offer openness, honesty, fairness, equity, transparency and new politics and they conduct themselves against hard-working corporate citizens like CDS Transport Limited," he said. Dismissing Moonilal's call to "cease and desist," Hinds said he was appointed by the President. He added: "My job is to call the Government to account, to hold them to scrutiny on behalf of the public. "We will find you wanting and we will expose your hideous face to the people as we are duty bound to do and nobody must command me to cease and desist, dat is my wuk."