JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

So­cial me­dia blog­ger Rho­da Bharath says she is worth every cent paid to her by the State for the past eight years un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said Bharath was paid over $3 mil­lion for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for the Fi­nance Min­istry.

In a What­sApp re­sponse hours af­ter­wards, Bharath told Guardian Me­dia, “I’m worth every cent I in­voiced for and did noth­ing un­eth­i­cal or il­le­gal in un­der­tak­ing con­sul­tan­cy work with a min­istry or its en­ti­ties.”

Ho­sein la­belled the rev­e­la­tion “hot backs,” short for hot bac­cha­nal dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion.

“Miss Rho­da Bharath, Mr Speak­er, col­lect­ed $3,027,735 from the Min­istry of Fi­nance. This in­di­vid­ual runs a so­cial me­dia page called Newsauce, Mr Speak­er. Pub­lic funds were be­ing used by that woman, Mr Speak­er, to den­i­grate per­sons, Mr Speak­er, use racist re­marks, Mr Speak­er, and to­day we are go­ing to ex­pose what was tak­ing place. And Mr Speak­er, I am not afraid of any of them, Mr Speak­er.”

On Bharath’s Newsauce Face­book page, she sub­se­quent­ly post­ed in all caps, “Go through hard, Sad­dam. I am very, very ready.”

Ho­sein added that the con­tract to Bharath un­der her me­dia com­pa­ny, Type 1 Me­dia and Re­search So­lu­tions, was signed by for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul when he was the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Fi­nance Min­istry.

The con­tract was be­tween De­cem­ber 1, 2017, and May 2025, he said, adding it was signed weeks af­ter the com­pa­ny was formed.

Ho­sein said this con­tract was sep­a­rate from her work at the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, where she earned $300,000 for the pe­ri­od she was hired. Ho­sein said Bharath was fired by Dhan­paul when he be­came fi­nance min­is­ter ear­li­er this year.

“As a paid blog­ger, to spew, Mr Speak­er, xeno­pho­bic, racist, Mr Speak­er, and ven­om. We on this side will ex­pose them for that, Mr Speak­er. But I want to go more in­to this, and I’ll give you ex­am­ples of what she was paid for. She did a 45-sec­ond ad­ver­tise­ment, 45 sec­onds for the NIF, and that cost the tax­pay­ers $80,000.”

He added that Bharath was paid some $82,000 for ser­vices ren­dered with­out any in­for­ma­tion on what that was. She was al­so paid $168,000 for an ad cam­paign and a fur­ther $56,300 to be a “paid shop­per for the mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin North East (Colm Im­bert),” he said.

Ho­sein said the doc­u­ment he had would be sent to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie for fur­ther ac­tion.