Denyse Renne

One of the first is­sues that soon-to-be-ap­point­ed Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man Ra­bindra Moo­nan will have to deal with is whether he will ap­prove the ex­ten­sion of a lease on a Range Rover for Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.Mooni­lal cur­rent­ly en­joys the use of a black Range Rover leased by the HDC for $289,800 a year.

The Range Rover HSE, which car­ries the li­cence plate PCR 5656, has been leased from Fur­ness Car Rentals.The T&T Guardian has con­firmed that the HDC pays a month­ly bill of $24,150 for the ve­hi­cle, while the to­tal lease agree­ment for the three-year pe­ri­od is $869,400.Sources say the lease took ef­fect on Feb­ru­ary 2011 and ends in Feb­ru­ary 2014.The Range Rover has been cus­tomised to in­clude blue po­lice strobe lights in the cen­tre of the grill at the front and back. A po­lice siren has al­so been in­stalled.

Ques­tions have been raised about why such a ve­hi­cle has been leased for the min­is­ter, and al­so why a state en­ter­prise is fi­nanc­ing the lease, giv­en that the min­istry that Mooni­lal heads has sev­er­al ve­hi­cles which can be used for of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment busi­ness.Apart from this, sources say oth­er ve­hi­cles could have been leased at a much cheap­er rate.Sources say when ve­hi­cles are leased, the min­is­ters do not pay for the ve­hi­cles' main­te­nance or op­er­a­tional costs. These costs as well as the leas­es are borne by tax­pay­ers.

At the time of the ap­proval, the HDC board was chaired by Henck­le Lall and in­clud­ed Dou­glas John­son, Gun­ness Su­dama, Graig Davis, Rey­na Kow­lessar, Nad­dia Ali and James Lam­bert.Ef­forts to con­tact those board mem­bers were un­suc­cess­ful.Last year, a slew of crit­i­cism was lev­elled against then Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath over the pur­chase of a $400,000 du­ty-free Porsche Cayenne as the of­fi­cial ve­hi­cle for his min­istry.

Bharath de­fend­ed the pur­chase, say­ing it was not ex­trav­a­gant.Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter said if a re­quest to lease the Range Rover had been made to Cab­i­net there would have been strong ob­jec­tion.Since the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment took of­fice, min­is­ters are now en­ti­tled to use a min­istry ve­hi­cle for of­fi­cial pur­pos­es.This en­ti­tle­ment was put in place af­ter Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts was in­volved in an ac­ci­dent on Oc­to­ber 6, 2010.

Min­is­ter replies

In re­sponse to sev­er­al text mes­sages sent by the T&T Guardian, Mooni­lal yes­ter­day re­spond­ed by de­fend­ing the use of the leased ve­hi­cle.He wrote: "The Rover is very stur­dy. The ve­hi­cle was pro­vid­ed as a lease ve­hi­cle in keep­ing with (the) prac­tice be­fore to pro­vide ve­hi­cle to min­is­ter."I al­so use oth­er ve­hi­cles de­pend­ing on work re­quire­ments.

"As for choice, Rover is strong and equipped for the ter­rain. You sel­dom see a Rover in high­way crash."He added that Cepep al­so pro­vid­ed trans­port sup­port when need­ed.The T&T Guardian then point­ed out that such a high-main­te­nance ve­hi­cle "puts a strain on tax­pay­ers, giv­en there are oth­er op­tions," to which Mooni­lal re­pled: "But Rover is very good ve­hi­cle, you should buy one if pos­si­ble."

The T&T Guardian re­peat­ed its ini­tial ques­tion on whether Mooni­lal had ap­proached the HDC board to ask it to lease the Range Rover. He is yet to re­spond.Asked whether he had re­ceived per­mis­sion from the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er to use the blue lights and siren on the Range Rover, Mooni­lal said he did not com­ment on mat­ters of se­cu­ri­ty.

"The de­vices are mat­ters un­der the purview of se­cu­ri­ty au­thor­i­ties, I don't com­ment on se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. Suf­fice to say we act ac­cord­ing to the law at all times," he texted.

Flash­back

On Jan­u­ary 17, 2012, Mooni­lal de­nied claims that his min­istry had pur­chased a Range Rover for his use. Speak­ing dur­ing a Par­lia­ment de­bate, Mooni­lal said MPs are en­ti­tled to con­ces­sions on cars and most take ad­van­tage of these, us­ing their per­son­al funds.He said while in op­po­si­tion he pur­chased a BMW X53 but sub­se­quent­ly sold it and bought a Range Rover for his per­son­al use, us­ing his per­son­al funds.

Mooni­lal al­so said the En­vi­ron­ment Min­istry planned to buy two hy­brid ve­hi­cles at a to­tal cost of $600,000. To date, sources say this is yet to hap­pen.

More in­fo

Ac­cord­ing to the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion Web site, the last pay hike for min­is­ters and MPs was in 2006. The Prime Min­is­ter's salary was in­creased to $48,000 a month; Cab­i­net min­is­ters' salaries in­creased to $33,000 a month and non-Cab­i­net min­is­ters to $27,000.The Leader of the Op­po­si­tion moved to $23,800, MPs (non-min­is­ters) in­creased to $14,000 and sen­a­tors (non-min­is­ters) $10,500.Among the al­lowances giv­en to gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are trans­port fa­cil­i­ties. These in­clude:

(i) A max­i­mum loan of $350,000 at a six per cent per an­num re­payable over six years for the pur­chase of ei­ther:

(a) a new ve­hi­cle with full ex­emp­tion from mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax, VAT and cus­toms du­ty; or

(b) a used ve­hi­cle with full ex­emp­tion from spe­cial mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax, VAT and cus­toms du­ty.

(ii) A loan to cov­er the cost of car in­sur­ance at a rate of in­ter­est of six per cent per an­num.

(iii) A max­i­mum loan of $20,000 at a rate of in­ter­est of six per cent per an­num for re­pairs to a ve­hi­cle.

(iv) A trans­porta­tion al­lowance of $4,700 per month.

(v) A per­son­al chauf­feur