For­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship min­is­ter Dr De­vant Ma­haraj was ap­proached yes­ter­day to be in­ter­viewed in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) probe of hu­man traf­fick­ing al­le­ga­tions and has agreed to do so.

Ma­haraj, who lives in Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia.

On Wednes­day, the TTPS an­nounced a probe of hu­man traf­fick­ing al­le­ga­tions now in the pub­lic do­main. This fol­lowed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­cent re­marks in Par­lia­ment that the al­le­ga­tion per­tained to a cur­rent Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who is not on the Gov­ern­ment side. Ma­haraj sup­port­ed that claim with fur­ther al­le­ga­tions which have been chal­lenged by UNC MPs.

Ma­haraj was con­tact­ed by Supt Pam­ponette, the head of the Task Force ap­point­ed to look in­to the hu­man traf­fick­ing is­sue about his will­ing­ness to give in­for­ma­tion. He sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived an email from Act­ing Sergeant Cavelle Mills-Wal­ters, an of­fi­cer in the TTPS’ Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit who said she is the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer as­signed to look in­to al­le­ga­tions.

“It would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed if you can fa­cil­i­tate me in con­duct­ing an in­ter­view with you to process this in­ves­ti­ga­tion with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame. You al­so have the op­tion to pre­pare your own state­ment and have same signed.

“On com­ple­tion of your in­ter­view/state­ment, same must be sent through the no­tary pub­lic for sig­na­ture,” she wrote.

Ma­haraj re­spond­ed: “Do ad­vise me of when you wish to speak to me on same. I stand ready to com­mu­ni­cate and co-op­er­ate with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“As I ad­vised, I am three hours be­hind Trinidad and To­ba­go, so the lat­er your time the bet­ter (for ex­am­ple 9 pm your time). We can do a Zoom/Teams/Skype call to dis­cuss fur­ther. I look for­ward to hear­ing from you.”

Ma­haraj sub­se­quent­ly re­quest­ed the ques­tions and is await­ing word from TTPS.

He al­so chal­lenged Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“If she is as se­ri­ous as she says about wel­com­ing the TTPS probe, why is she pro­tect­ing peo­ple in Par­lia­ment? Why doesn’t she call on them to step down from their po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment un­til their name is cleared as she did with Jack Warn­er, Ger­ald Ramdeen and Her­bert Vol­ney?”

The TTPS has not yet pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on the dead­line for com­plet­ing the probe com­ple­tion and whether of­fi­cials of both the PNM and UNC will be ex­am­ined.

For­mer min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said if and when the TTPS calls, he will speak to them. Bharath said he was ap­proached in 2014 while at the Hy­att by sev­er­al young women who said they were work­ing for a per­son. He added that per­son is now a UNC MP.

“The per­son then came up to me, in­tro­duced the girls as his mar­ket­ing em­ploy­ees and asked them to give me their busi­ness cards. No, I didn’t re­port the in­ci­dent as it was a ca­su­al in­ter­ac­tion and I didn’t en­cour­age it or fol­low it up,” Bharath said.

Ex-PTSC of­fi­cial con­firms probe

On Wednes­day, Ma­haraj said he had re­ceived a re­port on an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion done in 2012 by a team in the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) on a week­ly news­pa­per ar­ti­cle about al­le­ga­tions of hu­man traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion.

A doc­u­ment on the mat­ter stat­ed that the team was asked to as­cer­tain whether there was any ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the PTSC’s fa­cil­i­ties were be­ing used for ac­tiv­i­ties out­side the busi­ness of the cor­po­ra­tion. The name of a se­nior PTSC of­fi­cial who was al­so a UNC op­er­a­tive was men­tioned.

Ma­haraj claimed: “I sent the re­port to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in ear­ly 2012 but was in­struct­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter (Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar) not to fire the per­son in ques­tion, I felt dis­ap­point­ed a fe­male Prime Min­is­ter would al­low this sort of sit­u­a­tion.”

Up to late yes­ter­day, emails to Per­sad-Bisses­sar on that is­sue re­mained unan­swered.

How­ev­er, for­mer PTSC gen­er­al man­ag­er Ronald Forde said an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion did oc­cur. He wasn’t part of the team but said the doc­u­ment cir­cu­lat­ing stat­ed what was done. Forde said the doc­u­ment was sent to Ma­haraj, who was then the line min­is­ter.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed that Forde sum­moned the team on Feb­ru­ary 27, 2012, where he hand­ed each a doc­u­ment pub­lished in the T&T Mir­ror news­pa­per dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 10 head­lined “Govt sex ring” and in­struct­ed them to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions. The ar­ti­cle al­leged that a “se­nior state of­fi­cial” was pro­vid­ing es­cort ser­vices to “big wig of­fi­cials” at PTSC.