Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Princes Town Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Nela Khan and three for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tors as well as four-time Olympic medal­list Ato Boldon are among the list of of­fi­cials found to be in breach of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. In a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment on De­cem­ber 1, In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Reg­is­trar Mar­tin Far­rell pub­lished the names of the 28 of­fi­cials who failed to ad­here to Chap­ter 22:01, Sec­tion:11 of the Act by not fil­ing de­c­la­ra­tions of in­come, as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties state­ments for the years end­ing 2002 to 2006.

The Act re­quires that: "A per­son shall, with­in three months of be­com­ing a per­son in pub­lic life, com­plete and file with the Com­mis­sion in the pre­scribed form, a de­c­la­ra­tion of in­come, as­sets, and li­a­bil­i­ties in re­spect of the pre­vi­ous year and, there­after, on May 31 in each suc­ceed­ing year that he is a per­son in pub­lic life, he shall file fur­ther de­c­la­ra­tions of his in­come, as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties." Khan, the for­mer Princes Town North coun­cil­lor, who was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was found to be in breach of the Act dur­ing her tenure at the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in 2006. Found to be in con­tra­ven­tion of the law dur­ing that same pe­ri­od were then op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors-Boldon, Sylvester Ramquar and Ronald Phillip. The re­tired track star was ap­point­ed an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor rep­re­sent­ing the UNC dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2006 to 2007 af­ter mak­ing T&T proud at the Syd­ney Olympics.

How­ev­er, Boldon ne­glect­ed to com­ply with the law dur­ing his short stint in pub­lic of­fice. Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent of pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tion Za­meer Mo­hammed is al­so found to be in con­tra­ven­tion of the law. At the time, Mo­hammed was at­tached to the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in 2005. Al­so falling foul of the law is the vo­cal pres­i­dent of the Goat and Sheep Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan, guilty of fail­ing to file his de­c­la­ra­tions for the years 2002 to 2005. Di­rec­tor Patrick God­son-Phillips who played an in­te­gral role in the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment be­tween the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion has al­so been found to be in breach.

Last year, both par­ties signed for a 20 per cent in­crease to be­come payable to work­ers in June. Al­so mak­ing the list were the fol­low­ing of­fi­cials:

• An­tho­ny Richard­son–Lake As­phalt T&T (1978)

• Kennedy Flem­ming-Lake As­phalt T&T (1978)

• Michael Per­sads­ingh-Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank

• Pe­ter Al­bert-Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty

• Rick Ram­paras-Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty

• Paul Man­ickc­hand-The Co­coa and Cof­fee In­dus­try Board of T&T

• Jen­nifer Cud­joe-Braith­waite-The Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T

• Ethel­bert Har­ris-Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion

• Sais Narayan Ti­wary-Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T

• Hilton Charles-Trinidad Trans­port Board

• Rawl­in­son Agard-Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty/Petrotrin EAP Ser­vices Ltd

• Chris­tine John­son-T&T Film Com­pa­ny

• Christo­pher Ab­ley-T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion

• Cloyd Black­man-T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion

• Al­i­son Williams-Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency