Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings is once again deny­ing that he used his for­mer po­si­tion as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to ob­tain con­tracts for fam­i­ly busi­ness­es.

He ac­cused some mem­bers of the me­dia of at­tempt­ing to de­fame him and his fam­i­ly.

Speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day held at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain, the for­mer min­is­ter of youth de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al ser­vice said Pi­cal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and Rivulet In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed, di­rect­ed by his wife and daugh­ter, have done work with the State for more than three decades, in­clud­ing un­der a past UNC gov­ern­ment.

He said that all state con­tracts the com­pa­nies re­ceived pre­dat­ed his en­try in­to cab­i­net, adding that he left his role as di­rec­tors in the com­pa­nies in 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to him, Pi­cal was reg­is­tered in 2002 and Rivulet in 2012.

“I give the as­sur­ance that as a Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I have not act­ed dis­hon­ourably or act­ed in a way to ben­e­fit my fam­i­ly’s busi­ness­es.

“I wish to com­plete­ly re­ject the no­tion that hav­ing fam­i­ly in busi­ness should dis­qual­i­fy one from ser­vice in the Par­lia­ment or the Cab­i­net. It has not dis­qual­i­fied past or present politi­cians from serv­ing. This seems to be the sen­ti­ment of some me­dia per­son­nel, and again, I re­ject it out of hand,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Cum­mings, there are pro­fes­sion­als from nu­mer­ous sec­tors, so it’s un­rea­son­able to ex­pect that busi­ness­men must cease all work sim­ply be­cause they as­sume of­fice.

“It is im­prac­ti­cal, but what you do, how­ev­er, is make sure that that pub­lic of­fi­cial has an arm’s length, hands off, of any such arrange­ments, and that is the sit­u­a­tion in this case.

“All of those arrange­ments man­aged by the per­sons who are so charged to do so in that par­tic­u­lar state en­ter­prise (HDC) did not se­lect a par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny or not. It was their par­tic­u­lar man­age­ment that put in place cer­tain re­newals of cer­tain con­tracts, so don’t try to stretch it to that ex­tent,” he said.

Mean­while, Cum­mings’ col­league, Faris Al-Rawi, de­fend­ed him, say­ing there are laws in place to over­see pos­si­ble con­flicts of in­ter­est in of­fice.

He point­ed to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act and the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

“Is it that you’re say­ing there was some wrong­do­ing in the ex­ten­sions of con­tracts, sim­ply be­cause he is who he is, and was who he was?

“I’m sure you re­call Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar say­ing there will nev­er be con­flicts of in­ter­est in her cab­i­net, right? Mr Mooni­lal’s wife is a mem­ber of the board of di­rec­tors at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty. Do you think he par­tic­i­pat­ed in say­ing yes to his wife’s ap­point­ment? I think sev­er­al oth­ers have (as well)...Mr El­der, Mr Ke­sar,” he said.

Last Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk re­vealed that com­pa­nies di­rect­ed by Fos­ter Cum­mings’ wife and daugh­ter (Pi­cal and Rivulet) re­ceived more than $15 mil­lion in con­tract ex­ten­sions from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to HDC doc­u­ments, the con­tract ex­ten­sions were grant­ed 12 days be­fore the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

How­ev­er, Cum­mings ar­gued that the ex­ten­sions were grant­ed in Feb­ru­ary.