Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley must say whether he has in­ter­est in any of the com­pa­nies that un­suc­cess­ful­ly bid for the Beetham Waste Wa­ter (BWW) project since he had ac­com­pa­nied cer­tain in­vestors to go and see the UNC Gov­ern­ment about a sim­i­lar project in 2000, PP House Leader Roodal Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day.

Mooni­lal made the call in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate on a mo­tion by Row­ley call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to halt the BWW project. Mooni­lal re­peat­ed­ly point­ed out that Row­ley was ab­sent from the Par­lia­ment for de­bate on his own mo­tion.

Query­ing why the PNM want­ed the Gov­ern­ment to halt the project, Mooni­lal said in 2000, un­der the past UNC Gov­ern­ment, when a sim­i­lar project arose, Row­ley ac­com­pa­nied a group of in­vestors to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion to then min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh. Mooni­lal called on Row­ley to say if he rep­re­sents any of the 16 com­pa­nies that un­suc­cess­ful­ly bid for the project this time.

He said if Row­ley did, he (Row­ley) would have con­flict­ed his po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment de­bate and would not have been sin­cere in pi­lot­ing the de­bate. Query­ing Row­ley's po­si­tion, he point­ed out if the mo­tion suc­ceed­ed and the project halt­ed, the process would have to re­turn to com­pet­i­tive bid­ding again.Mooni­lal said the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had sanc­tioned the BWW project and had planned for it though the cur­rent PNM has crit­i­cised it.

He said the sec­ond bid­der for the BWW project–At­lat­e­ch–wrote NGC in March say­ing it was not ag­griev­ed that it had not won the bid and was not pur­su­ing the mat­ter fur­ther. He not­ed that the suc­cess­ful bid­der SIS Ltd was part­nered with the rep­utable firm of Fos­ter-Wheel­er and the PNM's at­tacks on com­pa­nies such as this would scare away po­ten­tial in­vestors.

Mooni­lal al­so ac­cused Row­ley of scan­dal­is­ing the names of NGC of­fi­cials who had many years' ex­pe­ri­ence in the com­pa­ny. He said such sit­u­a­tions con­tributed to "brain drain" and such at­tacks on the busi­ness and pro­fes­sion­al class was "part of the PNM's DNA."

Mooni­lal took is­sue with Row­ley's in­for­ma­tion, not­ing Row­ley had made in­cor­rect state­ments about the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the New York con­sulate is­sue and the NGC chair­man had to take out an ad­ver­tise­ment to cor­rect false in­for­ma­tion Row­ley had giv­en about him. Claim­ing Row­ley didn't check things, he al­so said Row­ley had brought in­for­ma­tion on the is­sue, say­ing it was giv­en to him by dis­grun­tled NGC work­ers.

Mooni­lal said T&T was fast be­com­ing a "Gestapo so­ci­ety" with para­noia. He said the Gov­ern­ment wel­comed the sun­rise but not the "sun­shine"–Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er's pa­per–which he said car­ried many al­le­ga­tions. He said a pic­ture of a house was de­lib­er­ate­ly leaked to the news­pa­per which still used it with­out check­ing.