Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has tak­en um­brage with claims by Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat Ma­haraj that To­bag­on­ian men are lazy rapists.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing at the Barataria South Sec­ondary School, on Tues­day night Row­ley said Ma­haraj was un­fit to lead the re­li­gious Hin­du or­gan­i­sa­tion and had over­stepped his line.

“So when the head of the Ma­ha Sab­ha sees it fit to sit down in front of his mi­cro­phone and make a blog to broad­cast to the world that To­bag­on­ian men are lazy rapists, I take ob­jec­tion to that,” Row­ley said.

Dur­ing a TV pro­gramme on Mon­day, Ma­haraj at­tacked To­bag­o­ni­ans in a very deroga­to­ry man­ner as he ad­dressed the Gov­ern­ment's re­cent de­ci­sion to lease an­oth­er fer­ry for the seabridge.

“Noth­ing go­ing cor­rect in To­ba­go; they’re lazy. Six out of ten of them work­ing for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, get­ting mon­ey from Port-of-Spain. They don’t want to work, and when they get a job, they go half past nine and 10 o’clock they go for break­fast," Ma­haraj said.

"The rest of them, able-bod­ied men - they don’t want to work at all. Run crab race, run goat race and go to the beach hunt­ing white meat.”

The video cre­at­ed out­rage amongst To­bag­o­ni­ans, in­clud­ing THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles and Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Wat­son Duke, who has called on Ma­haraj to apol­o­gise. Ma­haraj, how­ev­er, has so far stood by his words.

The PM, who was born in Ma­son Hall, said he would now wait to see who would tell Ma­haraj “this time you have gone too far. "

"This time, I wait to see any­body in the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty brave enough or strong enough to stand on prin­ci­ple and tell Sat Ma­haraj you are un­fit to lead any part of the com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

Row­ley al­so took of­fence with Ma­haraj ob­ject­ing to the Gov­ern­ment pay­ing $263,000 dai­ly for the leas­ing of the Jean de la Valette to ser­vice the seabridge.

“Tonight, I want to say again, as I said it be­fore, this ob­ses­sion with blam­ing and nam­ing black peo­ple as rapists and run by their pelvis is not a thing for 2019,” he said.

In 2015, as Op­po­si­tion Leader, Row­ley said the then prime min­is­ter and leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness “or­gan­ised to put on Hansard that the Op­po­si­tion Leader was a rapist. To­day, the leader of the Ma­ha Sab­ha goes one mile fur­ther (to say) To­bag­o­ni­ans are lazy and this coun­try ac­cepts that be­cause it is Sat.”

Row­ley said had he ac­cused any­one of be­ing a rapist, every­body else would have known and re­spond­ed.

“I have not heard the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion be­cause she can’t say a word be­cause she is the one who had or­gan­ised the Ver­nel­la scan­dal. The UNC can’t say a word be­cause that was sup­posed to be their elec­tion strat­e­gy. So, talk, Sat, talk.”

He said the coun­try has the po­ten­tial to go to high­er heights, "but those are the peo­ple and those are the things that keep pulling us down all the time.”