Shas­tri Boodan

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein has re­vealed that a high-lev­el in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to the reaf­foresta­tion pro­gramme and the in­volve­ment of a rel­a­tive of a for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in the so­cial pro­gramme.

Ho­sein made the dis­clo­sure dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Cou­va South Con­stituen­cy’s bud­get con­sul­ta­tion at the Cou­va South Au­di­to­ri­um on Wednes­day.

He de­scribed the pro­gramme as “rid­dled with cor­rup­tion,” not­ing it be­gan in 2003 as a tem­po­rary ten-year ini­tia­tive. It was ex­tend­ed in 2014 for three years and in 2016 to 2020. Since then, Ho­sein said the pro­gramme has been op­er­at­ing on a year-to-year ba­sis with­out any for­mal ex­ten­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ho­sein, over $1 bil­lion has been spent on the ini­tia­tive. An au­dit by the PNM gov­ern­ment in 2018 re­vealed that $843 mil­lion had al­ready been spent but on­ly 7,740 acres of the tar­get­ed 33,000 acres had been de­vel­oped.

He fur­ther claimed that on the eve of the last Gen­er­al Elec­tion (April 28), 80 long-term con­tracts were re­newed for three years and 47 ad­di­tion­al small con­trac­tors were hired, al­leg­ing that many con­tracts went to PNM coun­cil­lors, friends and rel­a­tives. He said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to miss­ing files is cur­rent­ly on­go­ing.

“The reaf­foresta­tion pro­gramme, man­aged through the RDC (Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny), dis­cov­ered that sev­en files re­lat­ing to con­trac­tor pay­ments went miss­ing. I am told that the last time those files were seen, they were in pos­ses­sion of two mem­bers of staff. Those em­ploy­ees are now on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” he said.

He said one of the em­ploy­ees is the rel­a­tive of a sit­ting Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

Ho­sein said the re­port on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is ex­pect­ed “in short or­der” and the pub­lic will be in­formed.

The min­is­ter al­so crit­i­cised the PNM for op­pos­ing the re­cent ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

“When they were drunk in De­cem­ber last year, hav­ing a par­ty the night they called their SoE, why didn’t they ask them­selves that ques­tion? Where was Pen­ny when that was hap­pen­ing?” he asked, claim­ing the UNC re­mained at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre for of­fi­cial brief­in­gs.

Ho­sein al­so an­nounced that for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed work­ers will be­gin re­ceiv­ing their land al­lo­ca­tions with­in the com­ing weeks.

“Some­thing the last gov­ern­ment could not do in ten years, we are do­ing in three months,” he said.

He al­so al­leged mil­lions of dol­lars were di­vert­ed from the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny to pay le­gal fees.

“They were push­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in­to that com­pa­ny, not to fix the land, build roads, or put in drains and lights—but to pay big-shot lawyers $50 to $100 mil­lion in le­gal fees. That is why they could not de­liv­er the lots,” Ho­sein said.

The min­is­ter al­so out­lined plans for the “stand-your-ground” leg­is­la­tion, which he said will in­tro­duce a home in­va­sion of­fence that could car­ry the death penal­ty.Asked about re­duc­ing tax­es or du­ties on firearms, he said Gov­ern­ment will re­view the frame­work for firearm ac­cess and li­cens­ing.