KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Oropouche East Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s boast of the Gov­ern­ment achiev­ing a $1 bil­lion sur­plus in fis­cal 2022 is an en­deav­our to de­flect from the in­op­er­a­tive scan­ners at the na­tion’s sea­ports.

Speak­ing at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, the for­mer Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter quipped that if Im­bert were a ca­lyp­son­ian, his stage name would be The Mighty De­flec­tor.

Mooni­lal, a mem­ber of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, heard last week that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) on­ly checked 17 per cent of the ship­ping con­tain­ers en­ter­ing the coun­try as its scan­ners were not work­ing. It came on the back­drop of a Strate­gic Se­cu­ri­ty Agency re­port that in­di­cat­ed there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal firearms in the coun­try at a val­ue of $144 mil­lion.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds al­so re­vealed last Ju­ly that 87 per cent of mur­ders in­volved guns.

Mooni­lal said Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment re­mind­ed him of an old court case where a fa­ther ap­peared for not pay­ing main­te­nance for his chil­dren.

“The chil­dren had no food. They had no mon­ey for ed­u­ca­tion. They had no shel­ter. They had no clothes, no Pam­pers for ba­bies and the hus­band came to the court and said all that hap­pened. True, but I was able to save some mon­ey. It is what Im­bert is say­ing,” Mooni­lal said.

He anal­o­gised that Im­bert was an abu­sive po­lit­i­cal fa­ther, sup­press­ing ex­pen­di­ture and cre­at­ing hard­ship by deny­ing the coun­try in­fra­struc­ture, so­cial wel­fare grants and tu­ition as­sis­tance for uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. He said the Gov­ern­ment al­so de­prives the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in Val­ued Added Tax re­funds but brags about sav­ing mon­ey. 

Mooni­lal re­called that dur­ing the UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, T&T re­ceived four scan­ners: three in 2012 for the Port of Port-of-Spain, for ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$2.5 mil­lion and an­oth­er in 2014.

Mooni­lal said an­oth­er crit­i­cal fail­ure was the staff short­age at the CED ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment did noth­ing to in­crease staff.

He said Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell’s out­rage with the CED at the JSC hear­ing was mis­placed and that he should look to his Cab­i­net to see if those mem­bers care.

“Does the Prime Min­is­ter care? Does the Fi­nance Min­is­ter care? Be­cause the Comp­trol­ler told us that they have writ­ten that they are try­ing to get four new scan­ners and are get­ting the runaround.”

Mooni­lal said the UNC got in­for­ma­tion that the Min­istry of Fi­nance told the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms that if the CED has to pro­cure scan­ners, do it through the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board. How­ev­er, Mooni­lal said na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­sets and equip­ment pro­cure­ment goes through the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil through a sole se­lec­tion process.