Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Monies paid in le­gal fees by the Gov­ern­ment are go­ing through the roof, UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein says.

He made the com­ment dur­ing the UNC Star Team meet­ing at the Sig­na­ture Hall, Ch­agua­nas, on Mon­day night.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had come to the Par­lia­ment hours ear­li­er in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ses­sion call­ing for an ad­di­tion­al $120 mil­lion to pay le­gal fees. He said this would make it a to­tal of $165 mil­lion in le­gal fees for 2024.

Ho­sein said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Amour al­so re­fused to tell the Low­er House who were the lawyers ben­e­fit­ting from these pay­ments. He said Gov­ern­ment has spent $480 mil­lion in le­gal fees in the past two years “They don’t want to tell who are the lawyers col­lect­ing these fees. You can’t get wa­ter and they are spend­ing mon­ey on lawyers,” he said, adding the UNC is ready to take the Gov­ern­ment to the Privy Coun­cil to get the in­for­ma­tion.

Speak­ing on the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tion, he ac­cused the Pa­tri­ots of run­ning a dirty cam­paign. He said the Pa­tri­ots want to hi­jack the par­ty and boot out leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“We are not go­ing to take any Ju­das in our par­ty,” he said.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the meet­ing, Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishard Seecha­ran called on Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to ac­count for how much mon­ey was re­al­ly spent by Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Based on a re­port from the min­istry, Seecha­ran said it spent just over $200 mil­lion dur­ing the two-year pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, he said on Sep­tem­ber 12, 2021, Deyals­ingh was quot­ed in a dai­ly news­pa­per say­ing that $480 mil­lion was spent dur­ing the first year of the pan­dem­ic.

Mean­while, St Au­gus­tine MP Kadi­jah Ameen said the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem was falling apart. She said UNC poli­cies from 2010 to 2015 had led to in­creased aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mances which peaked in 2014 but to­day, the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has 3,000 dropouts and a short­age of school so­cial work­ers.

She said stu­dents al­so suf­fer from abuse and there is chron­ic ab­sen­teeism.

She said many stu­dents are falling through the cracks and are now prey to gangs. She said good stu­dents are al­so vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse on the school com­pound and vic­tims of gang vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing. She said there al­so are no in­cen­tives for school leavers who can­not get a job.

Ameen said a UNC gov­ern­ment would bring back lap­tops for stu­dents and en­sure com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols out­side of schools to curb school vi­o­lence.