Fran­cis Joseph

A man­ag­er at NH In­ter­na­tion­al said yes­ter­day that she saw on a tele­vi­sion news­cast, then Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni East Gan­ga Singh hold­ing up in Par­lia­ment at least 22 de­liv­ery slips which were stolen from her desk in To­ba­go days be­fore. Kam­la Bir­bal, site of­fice man­ag­er, gave ev­i­dence yes­ter­day be­fore Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones in the Port-of-Spain High Court in the li­bel case brought by NH In­ter­na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Emile Elias against Singh.

The mat­ter stems from an ar­ti­cle quot­ing Singh that was pub­lished in the News­day news­pa­per on Oc­to­ber 19, 2004. Elias is seek­ing dam­ages for al­leged li­bel con­tained in the ar­ti­cle. The cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of wit­ness­es be­gan yes­ter­day. Bir­bal, a moth­er of two, was one of the wit­ness­es called on Elias' be­half. She said that on Fri­day, Oc­to­ber 14, 2004, she re­turned to her apart­ment in To­ba­go around 5.30 pm and im­me­di­ate­ly turned on her tele­vi­sion to look at the To­ba­go News tele­cast.

She said she saw Singh on the news­cast hold­ing up cer­tain doc­u­ments. "I recog­nise what they were...I got fright­ened and I went to call my se­niors," she said. Bir­bal said she recog­nised the doc­u­ments as "pink de­liv­ery slips" be­long­ing to one of the To­ba­go sup­pli­ers. She said she re­ceived those slips on Oc­to­ber 9, 2004, but left them on her desk to file away on Oc­to­ber 11, 2004. But when she turned up for work on Oc­to­ber 11, the slips were miss­ing. She asked the con­struc­tion man­ag­er, who re­spond­ed by say­ing the slips had to be some­where in the of­fice. But, Bir­bal said, the slips were not found.

"The slips I saw Mr Singh hold­ing up were the slips that went miss­ing from my desk," Bir­bal told the court. She said Singh was say­ing in Par­lia­ment, "I have the proof here of the re­moval of ma­te­ri­als from the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to the Lan­date project." An­oth­er wit­ness, busi­ness­man Dave De­bideen, de­nied that he ever told Gan­ga Singh or at­tor­ney Randy De­poo that NH In­ter­na­tion­al was re­mov­ing ma­te­ri­als from one site to an­oth­er.

De­bideen ad­mit­ted that Singh and De­poo were his friends and that he had vis­it­ed their homes on many oc­ca­sions.

De­bideen said he nev­er had such a con­ver­sa­tion with De­poo at a hair sa­lon in St James. He said he was con­cerned that De­poo, a for­mer con­sular of­fi­cer at the US Em­bassy, would lie on him.

De­bideen said when Singh was Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, he con­sid­ered the min­is­ter his friend. When asked if he con­sid­ered Singh to be trust­wor­thy, De­bideen replied, "I can't say." But he in­ter­ject­ed, "It is good to know a politi­cian, it was in my in­ter­est...I nev­er called Singh to tell him of any al­le­ga­tions. "I nev­er tele­phoned Gan­ga Singh to give him any in­for­ma­tion about the sy­phon­ing of ma­te­ri­als from the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal to Lan­date." Hear­ing con­tin­ues on Mon­day.

Law­ers

Alvin Fitz­patrick, SC, and Les­ley Ann Lucky-Sama­roo for Emile Elias. Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Rishi Dass, Jagdeo Singh, and Robin Ot­way for Gan­ga Singh.