Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Del­mond Bak­er aroused the ire of PNM Sen­a­tor Sham­fa Cud­joe in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day when he ac­cused the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) of si­phon­ing off mil­lions of dol­lars of its al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in­to elec­tion road-paving ex­er­cis­es, con­tin­gency funds and even a bank ac­count.

Bak­er, who made his sec­ond ap­pear­ance in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, was speak­ing dur­ing a mo­tion on a Re­view of the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go brought by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Vic­tor Wheel­er.

He said the THA re­ceived close to $2 bil­lion every year from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to run its af­fairs but the de­liv­ery of health care re­mained a prob­lem.

Bak­er said for six months there were on­ly two am­bu­lances in the sis­ter isle.

He al­so said, to date, a damn­ing re­port on the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) in re­la­tion to the death of Le­ciana Shep­pard while giv­ing birth at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal in Oc­to­ber last year had not been re­leased.

Bak­er ques­tioned the THA's usu­al cry that it did not get enough mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment.

He said some $600 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed an­nu­al­ly to the TRHA but ques­tioned whether cit­i­zens were ben­e­fit­ing from this.

Bak­er said for the last five years, $100 mil­lion from the THA's an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion had been kept and placed in­to a con­tin­gency fund.

An­oth­er $10 mil­lion was tak­en out and banked in a pri­vate ac­count.

He said with the im­pend­ing gen­er­al elec­tion lat­er this year, there was a flur­ry of road-paving projects in To­ba­go West, which he would be con­test­ing.

Cud­joe be­gan her pre­sen­ta­tion by say­ing when Bak­er walked through the door she was very pleased since he was a med­ical doc­tor who worked with the TRHA.

Her plea­sure soon turned to vex­a­tion when Bak­er be­gan to "cast all kinds of as­per­sions" on the PNM-con­trolled THA.

She avoid­ed ad­dress­ing the Shep­pard in­ves­ti­ga­tion and oth­er is­sues, how­ev­er, say­ing they were be­fore the court and it was, there­fore, sub­ju­dice, to talk about them.

She said us­ing funds for elec­tion projects had been go­ing on in To­ba­go since the time of for­mer MP and prime min­is­ter Arthur NR Robin­son and be­fore.

As for sav­ing in con­tin­gency funds, the THA had to do this be­cause it did not ben­e­fit from IDB loans to de­vel­op the is­land.

Cud­joe fo­cused her at­tack on Bak­er him­self, say­ing he would not win To­ba­go since the peo­ple there were very clear about what was hap­pen­ing.

"We don't have to spend a cent to win," Cud­joe said.

Bak­er, she said, on the oth­er hand, did not seem to know whether he was with the To­ba­go For­wards or the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple, led by Ash­worth Jack.

Bak­er, she said, had been hand­ing out grants to church­es and youth groups.

At this point, Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj shot up ap­peal­ing for the Vice-Pres­i­dent's in­ter­ven­tion.