Kevon Felmine

Two days af­ter four em­ploy­ees of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) ap­peared in court on fraud charges, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice yes­ter­day had to stop a meet­ing in which one of the ac­cused was al­leged­ly a par­tic­i­pant, af­ter three of the ac­cused still re­port­ed for du­ty.

Fol­low­ing that meet­ing at the CT­TRC's tech­ni­cal build­ing, it was re­port­ed that Fraud Squad in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­turned to the Rail­way Road, Cou­va com­pound.

CT­TRC chair­man, Hen­ry Awong, told the T&T Guardian last night that those who showed up yes­ter­day: Coun­ty su­per­in­ten­dent Mani­ram Mo­hess and en­gi­neer Bar­ry Sama­roo will re­port to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment's Port-of-Spain of­fice to­day, while check­er Ian Gokool was sent on leave by CT­TRC act­ing CEO Char­maine Dook­ie.

The trio, along with CEO Car­ol Dyal, ap­peared be­fore Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles on Mon­day, charged with con­spir­ing to de­fraud the CT­TRC of $149,500. The charges re­late to a con­tract award­ed for the in­stal­la­tion of out­door ex­er­cise equip­ment at the San Pablo Recre­ation Ground and the Todd's Road Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre.

Busi­ness­man Ma­hase Sookai is al­so an ac­cused in the mat­ter. They are sched­uled to reap­pear in the Cou­va Mag­is­trate Court to­mor­row.

But In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) al­der­man, Sunil Ramjits­ingh, was up­set the em­ploy­ees had been al­lowed to re­turn to work yes­ter­day, say­ing it is stan­dard prac­tice in the pub­lic ser­vice that when of­fi­cers are on crim­i­nal charges in re­la­tion to their con­duct in of­fice, those of­fi­cers are im­me­di­ate­ly placed on sus­pen­sion pend­ing the out­come of the court mat­ter.

In a joint state­ment, Ramjits­ingh, fel­low ILP al­der­man, Beer­an Ram­baran, and Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment coun­cil­lor Alif Mo­hammed, said: "It is pre­pos­ter­ous and in­sane that of­fi­cers against whom crim­i­nal charges are pend­ing should be al­lowed to freely roam through con­trolled ar­eas of the CT­TRC and to han­dle doc­u­ments that have ev­i­den­tial po­ten­tial."

Speak­ing by tele­phone, Ramjits­ingh said work­ers alert­ed them that the em­ploy­ees were not on­ly on the com­pound but were hold­ing a meet­ing with co-work­ers.

He said work­ers left the meet­ing trau­ma­tised as they felt threat­ened af­ter they were told their jobs could be in jeop­ardy and po­lice could re­turn to ar­rest more of them.

The coun­cil­lors said they con­tact­ed the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment of­fice, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Awong and Dook­ie, but the work­er al­leged­ly re­fused to stop the meet­ing and con­tin­ued to is­sue in­struc­tions to the work­ers. The meet­ing was even­tu­al­ly stopped by a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer around 1 pm.

At the last statu­to­ry meet­ing, op­po­si­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the CT­TRC raised a mo­tion for the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, con­cerned that sub­stan­tial amounts were pil­fered. The mo­tion was ap­proved by the coun­cil but with the ac­cused al­leged­ly in­ter­fer­ing in that process, they now be­lieve it is taint­ed.

Awong: Re­flects

on us bad­ly

CT­TRC chair­man Awong, who spent yes­ter­day at his Tabaquite of­fice, said yes­ter­day that the ac­cused work­ers claimed that they were not giv­en any di­rec­tive by the Dook­ie or the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to re­frain from en­ter­ing the com­pound or re­port­ing for du­ty yes­ter­day.

He said af­ter the mat­ter was raised by their col­leagues, Gob­in was sub­se­quent­ly ad­vised by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary that Sama­roo and Mo­hess should re­port to the min­istry. He said she al­so then sus­pend­ed Gokool based on her au­thor­i­ty in the col­lec­tive agree­ment. Dyal pro­ceed­ed on va­ca­tion leave a month ago.

Awong said he had asked for a re­port on the ac­cused em­ploy­ees to be sub­mit­ted.

"They came out to work to­day and I un­der­stand that they went to the CEO's of­fice and were await­ing her in­struc­tions. She was not there, she was in a meet­ing in Port-of-Spain this morn­ing.

"When I spoke to her, she said she was go­ing to ask the of­fi­cers to re­port to her of­fice un­til she comes. She told me that when she came down, they were at her of­fice await­ing her," Awong said.

He said peo­ple did not dif­fer­en­ti­ate the role of the CT­TRC's ad­min­is­tra­tion and the coun­cil, so every­thing that wens wrong there re­flect­ed bad­ly on the elect­ed can­di­dates. He said as chair­man he could not in­struct any em­ploy­ees but on­ly re­quest in­for­ma­tion from the CEO.

He said the lat­est de­vel­op­ments were un­healthy and showed the CT­TRC in a "bad light".

"There are hon­est, hard work­ing em­ploy­ees right now who are de­mor­alised and de­mo­ti­vat­ed. Op­er­a­tions at the cor­po­ra­tions will al­most grind to a halt now be­cause the act­ing CEO is new and I am hop­ing that she can re­cov­er and put things in place to have the goods and ser­vices that the burgess­es de­pend on from us not be hin­dered in any way," Awong added.