Richard Lord

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (NP) will be pur­sued like the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) to en­sure the truth is re­vealed about the al­leged $40 mil­lion gas deal with a garbage truck­ing com­pa­ny."This is a scan­dal of the high­est or­der," Row­ley added.He wants to know the Prime Min­is­ter's in­ter­est in the award of the con­tract to trans­port flam­ma­ble gaso­line for NP.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had no knowl­edge of the con­tract.Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion was seek­ing, via the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, to get copies of all the min­utes of NP's re­cent board meet­ings to find out how the deal was ar­rived at.He said the in­for­ma­tion would be re­leased to the pub­lic if and when it was re­ceived.He said the PP Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to "cov­er up all these in­frac­tions while por­tray­ing it­self as paragons of virtue."

Row­ley said: "NP will be called up­on to ex­plain this move, which is on­ly meant to ben­e­fit those who have done favours for the Prime Min­is­ter, her par­ty and her Gov­ern­ment or have been se­lect­ed with­out be­ing fair."Row­ley added: "The state en­ter­prise Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um will be held up to pub­lic scruti­ny in the same way that Ude­cott was held to pub­lic scruti­ny."He al­so said a state­ment by Am­bas­sador Makan­dal Daa­ga should be tak­en as a warn­ing that all was not well with­in the PP Gov­ern­ment.Daa­ga said at the found­ing con­gress of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice that "there was too much cor­rup­tion and peo­ple are steal­ing mon­ey as though they in­vent­ed it."