Gail Alexan­der

Hin­du Cred­it Union de­pos­i­tors must get back their mon­ey, since the PNM Gov­ern­ment has been neg­li­gent on the HCU mat­ter and is re­spon­si­ble for de­pos­i­tors' loss­es, Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day de­clared yes­ter­day.

Pan­day made the point while pi­lot­ing a mo­tion in his name dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives' sit­ting, which a num­ber of HCU de­pos­i­tors at­tend­ed.

Build­ing a case for Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide a bailout plan for HCU as it did for CL Fi­nan­cial de­pos­i­tors, Pan­day said the HCU dilem­ma was Gov­ern­ment's fault. He said the state had a moral and le­gal oblig­a­tion to com­pen­sate those who had suf­fered, due to its fail­ure to heed the HCU sit­u­a­tion when hints of prob­lems first arose sev­en years ago. "My con­cern is that HCU de­pos­i­tors do not lose their mon­ey, since their suf­fer­ing is com­pa­ra­ble to and equal to all who put their mon­ey in fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and lose them," Pan­day said. Pan­day con­tend­ed that Gov­ern­ment was neg­li­gent in han­dling the HCU sit­u­a­tion, hav­ing failed to per­form the re­quired su­per­vi­so­ry and in­ves­tiga­tive du­ties. He said Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters had known since 2002 the HCU was in trou­ble since two min­is­ters had made state­ments on the is­sue. Pan­day said in 2004, de­pos­i­tors had al­so writ­ten the Com­mis­sion­er of Cred­it Unions seek­ing to get their HCU funds and one de­pos­i­tor even­tu­al­ly went to court. Pan­day not­ed the con­cerns of Jus­tice James Aboud in the mat­ter.

Gov­ern­ment, Pan­day con­tend­ed, there­by de­ceived de­pos­i­tors and mis­led po­ten­tial de­pos­i­tors who are now to­day's vic­tims of the Gov­ern­ment's neg­li­gence on the HCU. Pan­day said points made by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ear­li­er in the year on the CLF bailout plan should al­so ap­ply to the HCU is­sue since the HCU had suf­fered the same illiq­uid­i­ty prob­lem. Not­ing that Gov­ern­ment was in­ject­ing $5bil­lion in­to CLF, Pan­day said the HCU on­ly re­quired $400 mil­lion. Pan­day said HCU de­pos­i­tors were equal hu­man be­ings and should have eq­ui­table treat­ment by the state. He said Gov­ern­ment had a moral and con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty to treat all cit­i­zens equal­ly and must pro­tect HCU de­pos­i­tors as they did CLF in­vestors. Pan­day urged HCU in­vestors to keep their de­posit doc­u­ments safe, since a UNC Gov­ern­ment would en­sure that every de­pos­i­tor se­cures their mon­ey. "You know when the UNC makes a promise we keep it–our record of per­for­mance is liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny," Pan­day de­clared.