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Monday, July 14, 2025

Row­ley: Scan­dalous spend­ing un­der PP

'They can't be trusted'

by

20161117

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has made a star­tling rev­e­la­tion of scan­dalous and waste­ful spend­ing amount­ing to mil­lions of dol­lars by the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion to en­rich its friends.

The al­le­ga­tions in­clude a whop­ping $350,000 roti bill for a Di­vali func­tion at the PM's of­fi­cial res­i­dence, $47,000 for month­ly pool main­te­nance and un­war­rant­ed spend­ing on a wa­ter con­tract for the res­i­dence and the build­ing of box drains.

The PM made the claims dur­ing a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day night as he dis­cred­it­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rant about con­tracts be­ing award­ed to the wives of Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. He said while they were try­ing to tar­nish the PNM's name, they were guilty of wan­ton spend­ing and pro­ceed­ed to tell "sto­ries" based on doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence and first-hand ac­counts from peo­ple who op­er­at­ed with her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He re­ferred to the un­prece­dent­ed method of award­ing a con­tract to build the stalled and con­tro­ver­sial Point Fortin High­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin, the award­ing of $1 bil­lion to the pre­ferred con­trac­tor pri­or to its start and the chang­ing of claus­es in the con­tract on the eve of last year's gen­er­al elec­tion to pro­tect the con­trac­tor when its par­ent com­pa­ny went bank­rupt.

With ref­er­ence to func­tions host­ed at the PM's res­i­dence, Row­ley not­ed that over $1.6 mil­lion was spent on a Di­vali func­tion, with records show­ing $350,000 of that fig­ure be­ing spent on roti alone.

He added: "She wav­ing a pa­per that she has proof that (En­er­gy Min­is­ter) Frankie Khan's wife got a con­tract and was paid for it. This se­nior coun­sel can't see if you get a con­tract and you did the work you ought to be paid.

"I want you to wave your re­ceipt for the con­tract for the roti... $350,000 in roti for one Di­vali func­tion at the PM's res­i­dence."

He said: "Look at this crowd here tonight. If I give every one of you two roti, I can't spend that kind of mon­ey, but they want to go back in of­fice. When you have mon­ey you do things like that but trust me, you don't want to go back there."

As the crowd lapped up the sto­ries, Row­ley spoke about a wa­ter prob­lem at the of­fi­cial res­i­dence since he moved in nine months ago, be­cause "some­body un­der the last regime ce­ment the valve close to the PM's res­i­dence so as to gen­er­ate an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a con­tract for some­one to sup­ply wa­ter to the PM's res­i­dence."

Row­ley said he called in the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine why there was no wa­ter in the sys­tem "and all WASA had to do was break the con­crete, open the valve and we have had wa­ter flow­ing ever since."

He al­so told a tale of how Cab­i­net col­league, Stu­art Young, want­ed to give up his min­is­te­r­i­al salary to main­tain the pool at the res­i­dence, af­ter learn­ing some­one was be­ing paid $47,000 a month for its main­te­nance. He said the con­trac­tor main­tain­ing the pool was fired and un­der his tenure the same pool is now be­ing main­tained at $15,000.

Al­lud­ing to cor­rup­tion in the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, he spoke about a man who was in­tro­duced to him "as so and so who thief so and so mon­ey," dur­ing a walk­a­bout in Clax­ton Bay pri­or to the last gen­er­al elec­tion.

Row­ley said the man de­nied he stole but ad­mit­ted to tak­ing a "lift" (a hand in all fours) from the Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial he used to pick up mon­ey for which he used to build a man­sion equipped with a pool.

"He took the lift and the man fire him. He lost the work but he kept the lift and he got a house and a pool from one lift. That eh no joke, was told to me by the man. That is where mon­ey was go­ing in this coun­try," he sur­mised.

Point­ing out to the au­di­ence that the PP was known as the box-drain gov­ern­ment, Row­ley re­lat­ed a sto­ry told to him by a Port-of-Spain busi­ness­man about one of his em­ploy­ees and son, who were al­so able to build a man­sion and pur­chase sev­er­al high-end ve­hi­cles from build­ing box drains.

He said the busi­ness­man ini­tial­ly thought the man and his son were milk­ing his com­pa­ny dry, on­ly to re­alise their wealth was be­ing ac­quired from box-drain con­tracts in which a cut was giv­en to cor­rupt of­fi­cials.

"This eh no nan­cy sto­ry, the Port-of-Spain busi­ness­man was re­lieved that the mon­ey (used to ac­quire the wealth) was not leak­ing from his com­pa­ny, it was leak­ing from the Trea­sury of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he added.


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