Asha Javeed

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj is deny­ing that he in­struct­ed the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Patt) to ter­mi­nate all le­gal briefs with le­gal en­ti­ties and take im­me­di­ate steps to en­gage For­tis Cham­bers and the Cham­bers of for­mer min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Sub­has Pan­day. In Patt's un­con­firmed board min­utes held on Au­gust 25, un­der the Sec­tion 9 ti­tled 'Oth­er Mat­ters' read an "in­struc­tion" from Ma­haraj which was con­veyed by Com­mis­sion­er Jal­im Ram­nar­ine on new arrange­ments for le­gal briefs for PATT.

The minute read:

"Com­mis­sion­er Jal­im Ram­nar­ine, un­der the Agen­da item, Oth­er Mat­ters, in­formed the Meet­ing that the Ho­n­ourable Mr De­vant Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Trans­port, had di­rect­ed that he con­vey to the Port Au­thor­i­ty's Board the fol­low­ing in­struc­tions:

i) That the Port Au­thor­i­ty take im­me­di­ate steps to en­gage For­tis Cham­bers and the Cham­bers of Mr Sub­has Pan­day as its sole providers of ex­ter­nal le­gal ser­vices;

ii) That the Port Au­thor­i­ty im­me­di­ate­ly ter­mi­nate ALL le­gal briefs cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing with oth­er le­gal ser­vices providers and re-as­sign ALL such briefs to For­tis Cham­bers and the Cham­bers of Sub­has Pan­day and

iii) That due care must be tak­en to en­sure that these di­rec­tive are ap­pro­pri­ate­ly record­ed in the min­utes of the Au­thor­i­ty's meet­ing."

Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Guardian that he had spo­ken to Ram­nar­ine and had nev­er giv­en those in­struc­tions. In­stead, Ma­haraj said, that he in­struct­ed that the Port go out for pub­lic ten­der­ing of all its le­gal briefs. "I spoke with Jal­im and he said he nev­er said that. He went to the chair­man to cor­rect it. "For the mo­ment the minute is un­con­firmed and will be cor­rect­ed at the next board meet­ing," said Ma­haraj.

Present at that meet­ing was Patt chair­man Clive Spencer, deputy chair­man Suresh Gan­gaper­sad, and mem­bers Nir­mala Har­ry­lal, Pa­tri­cia Her­ry, Georgina Ter­ry, Sham Ghool and Ram­nar­ine with PATT's man­age­ment team: chief ex­ec­u­tive Col­in Lu­cas, port sec­re­tary Er­va Bruno, deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of TTIT Leon Grant, deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of cor­po­rate ser­vices Kath­leen Maxwell, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er fi­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tion Char­maine Lewis and chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, Camille Hy­po­lite-Fer­di­nand.