It is a land­mark wastage. That is how Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to spend mil­lions of dol­lars to re­trieve a crashed fire ten­der last year.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Row­ley said based on pub­lished news­pa­per re­ports the Cab­i­net de­ci­sion au­tho­ris­ing the $6.8 mil­lion pay­ment "does not war­rant any in­quiry" as "all in­quiries and queries would have been made by the Cab­i­net at its first, sec­ond and third at­tempt be­fore it agreed to this land­mark wastage."

Row­ley added: "What is re­quired now is an im­me­di­ate un­am­bigu­ous and truth­ful ex­pla­na­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter, the head of the Cab­i­net, with full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment's scan­dalous ac­tion."Yes­ter­day PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­fused to take ques­tions from the me­dia af­ter a func­tion at her of­fice in St Clair.Row­ley said cit­i­zens "should take no com­fort in the fact that this is not the ac­tion of a pub­lic ser­vant or a rogue State en­ter­prise out­side of the view of the Cab­i­net. This is ac­tion af­ter ex­ten­sive de­lib­er­a­tions by a Cab­i­net that has con­sis­tent­ly failed the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

He said for quite some time the Op­po­si­tion had been point­ing out that the Cab­i­net was not func­tion­ing prop­er­ly and that there were per­sons who were above the laws and reg­u­la­tions.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter was a fa­cil­i­ta­tor of wrong­do­ing and gen­er­al in­ex­plic­a­ble con­duct of per­sons in and out of the Cab­i­net."There could be no bet­ter demon­stra­tion of an ir­re­spon­si­ble and dys­func­tion­al Cab­i­net than that which is por­trayed in this naked rape of the Trea­sury with Cab­i­net ap­proval," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley the Op­po­si­tion main­tains that the mat­ter on the re­cov­ery of the fire ten­der at ex­or­bi­tant cost, while symp­to­matic of the Gov­ern­ment, "pales in­to in­signif­i­cance when com­pared to a sim­i­lar ac­tion which the Op­po­si­tion has re­port­ed to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion."

He was re­fer­ring to the pur­chase of a de­vel­op­ment at Cal­cut­ta Road, Cou­va, which was val­ued at $45 mil­lion and for which the Cab­i­net agreed to pay $175 mil­lion.He said the Op­po­si­tion was await­ing the find­ings of the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­to that and oth­er out­ra­geous ac­tions di­rect­ed and fa­cil­i­tat­ed by mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment at great ex­pense and loss to the long-suf­fer­ing peo­ple of T&T.