Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There is ex­pect­ed to be fur­ther heat in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day over the ef­fec­tive­ness of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) and the ris­ing num­ber of mur­ders in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as de­bate on a re­port con­cern­ing a PNM sen­a­tor’s con­tin­ued mem­ber­ship on a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee.

The mat­ters are list­ed on the House’s Or­der Pa­per for to­day’s sit­ting, which is tak­ing place ear­li­er than the usu­al Fri­day sched­ule.

Op­po­si­tion MPs Stu­art Young and Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les are among those sched­uled to ques­tion Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters Bar­ry Padarath (Pub­lic Util­i­ties), Dave Tan­coo (Fi­nance), Roodal Mooni­lal (En­er­gy) and Roger Alexan­der (Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty) on a range of is­sues.

Gon­za­les is ex­pect­ed to fo­cus par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion on the ef­fec­tive­ness of the SoE, the Home In­va­sion (Stand Your Ground) leg­is­la­tion, and the broad­er is­sue of mur­ders in the coun­try.

Fol­low­ing last Fri­day’s ex­change be­tween Gon­za­les and Padarath over the re­cruit­ment process for the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Main­te­nance, Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS), Gon­za­les is again press­ing for writ­ten de­tails of the se­lec­tion process that led to the ap­point­ment of Nicholas Khan­hai.

At last Fri­day’s sit­ting, Gon­za­les ques­tioned the to­tal re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age, in­clud­ing al­lowances and non-mon­e­tary ben­e­fits, at­tached to Khan­hai’s con­tract. He al­so asked about Khan­hai’s pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, whether he had served as an ad­vis­er to Padarath’s min­istry, and whether he was a for­mer UNC coun­cil­lor.

In re­sponse, Padarath ques­tioned the process used to ap­point for­mer sub­stan­tive MTS CEO Lennox Rat­tans­ingh, pre­sent­ing a pho­to­graph of Rat­tans­ingh ac­com­pa­ny­ing for­mer PNM Ch­agua­nas East can­di­date Rishi Sookhai on Nom­i­na­tion Day for the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Padarath ac­cused the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of what he de­scribed as a “feed­ing fren­zy,” say­ing an au­dit in­to MTS would ex­pose “the mess” in­her­it­ed by the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment. He added that Khan­hai had “a cou­ple of years” ex­pe­ri­ence as an ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er in the pri­vate sec­tor, but did not dis­close de­tails of his re­mu­ner­a­tion.

When Gon­za­les again pressed for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the re­cruit­ment process, Padarath main­tained that Khan­hai was ap­point­ed through the “same process” used by the PNM when it was in gov­ern­ment to ap­point MTS’ act­ing CEO, while adding that Khan­hai was “con­duct­ing af­fairs dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Mean­while, de­bate on the Pa­role Bill is al­so ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue at to­day’s sit­ting of the House.