Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle has de­nied any con­flict of in­ter­est in con­tracts award­ed to a com­pa­ny as­so­ci­at­ed with him and two rel­a­tives, say­ing the is­sue is be­ing used as a po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed over the week­end that Ab­bike Con­struc­tion, a firm owned by Mar­celle and fam­i­ly mem­bers, re­ceived near­ly $2 mil­lion in con­tracts be­tween 2021 and 2025. Be­tween 2024 and 2025 alone, the com­pa­ny earned more than $700,000.

Mar­celle, who was ap­point­ed an al­der­man in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion in 2024 be­fore win­ning the Laven­tille West seat in 2025, dis­missed claims that his po­lit­i­cal ties in­flu­enced the awards.

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Mar­celle said, “I be­came a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment on April 28 and an al­der­man last Feb­ru­ary. That com­pa­ny was award­ed a con­tract some­time around 2017 or 2018—long be­fore I was in­volved in pol­i­tics or pub­lic life.”

He said his role in Ab­bike Con­struc­tion was lim­it­ed and short-lived.

“I was not orig­i­nal­ly part of the com­pa­ny and would have served on­ly for a brief pe­ri­od,” he added, de­scrib­ing the con­tro­ver­sy as “100 per cent a dis­trac­tion by the UNC.”

When told the in­for­ma­tion orig­i­nat­ed from a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quest rather than the Op­po­si­tion, Mar­celle main­tained that me­dia at­ten­tion was mis­placed.

“If the me­dia choos­es to fo­cus on who re­ceived con­tracts, that is one as­pect. But the oth­er as­pect is that you have a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis where over 10,000 work­ers have been sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed and can’t pro­vide for their ba­sic needs,” he said.

Asked whether his par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion in­flu­enced the com­pa­ny’s con­tract awards, Mar­celle again re­ferred to the com­pa­ny’s ear­ly time­line.

“That is why I went back to 2017. I was start­ing UWI then, and I held no po­si­tion in the PNM. I have no se­nior or ju­nior role with­in the par­ty. So when you try to link one with the oth­er, it just doesn’t ex­ist,” he said.

Mar­celle al­so ac­knowl­edged that his moth­er, a known PNM sup­port­er, pre­vi­ous­ly served as an al­der­man in the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, but said there was no con­nec­tion be­tween her ser­vice and Ab­bike Con­struc­tion’s con­tracts.

Be­tween 2009 and 2023, the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) re­ceived more than $6.5 bil­lion in al­lo­ca­tions, pro­vid­ing thou­sands of low-in­come fam­i­lies with em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tions have shown that weak po­lit­i­cal over­sight has al­lowed sev­er­al con­tract­ed com­pa­nies—many with lim­it­ed trans­paren­cy—to earn be­tween $20,000 and $50,000 per month in man­age­ment fees. Al­le­ga­tions of nepo­tism, favouritism, and kick­backs have per­sist­ed un­der suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments.

The 2024 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port al­so raised con­cerns about CEPEP’s fis­cal ac­count­abil­i­ty, not­ing that $499.2 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“Doc­u­ments to sup­port three pay­ments to­talling $55.6 mil­lion to the CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed were not pro­vid­ed for au­dit,” the re­port stat­ed.