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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Mark picks apart PSC nominees just days before Parliament debate

by

Shaliza Hassanali
1345 days ago
20211107
Opposition Senator Wade Mark speaks during the UNC’s virtual press conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Opposition Senator Wade Mark speaks during the UNC’s virtual press conference at the Office of the Opposition Leader, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark is call­ing on Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes to im­me­di­ate­ly with­draw three of the five Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) nom­i­nees over what he al­leged as a con­flict of in­ter­est and ap­par­ent bias with the se­lec­tion process.

Mark made the call for Weekes to re­con­sid­er the nom­i­na­tions of Max­ine At­tong, Ian Ramd­hanie and Max­ine King three days be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley pi­lots the de­bate to ap­prove the five-mem­ber Com­mis­sion in Par­lia­ment.

The two oth­er nom­i­nees are at­tor­ney Ra­jiv Per­sad and re­tired judge Ju­dith Jones.

The pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion col­lapsed on Sep­tem­ber 25.

Speak­ing at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Mark told re­porters that some of the nom­i­nees need to come clean in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic.

“Some of these per­sons that have been nom­i­nat­ed may have or may pos­sess or maybe very dis­tin­guished sons and daugh­ters of the soil. We have no per­son­al griev­ances with any­one who have been nom­i­nat­ed.”

How­ev­er, he said there were po­ten­tial ar­eas of con­flict that need­ed an­swers.

He called on the Pres­i­dent “to clear the air” on three nom­i­nees, stat­ing there should be no con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, sub­ver­sion or in­ter­fer­ence with the se­lec­tion process.

“So the per­sons who are se­lect­ed have to be like Cae­sar’s wife. They have to be­yond re­proach. I would have imag­ined that prop­er due dili­gence would have been done by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.”

The first nom­i­nee Mark iden­ti­fied was Ramd­hanie who he claimed works for the Caribbean In­sti­tute of Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Safe­ty (CISPS).

Mark said a check with the Reg­is­ter Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment in Au­gust showed that CISPS is owned by Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd which has been pro­vid­ing trans­port of prison of­fi­cers to and from courts for over a decade.

While Mark said the UNC has noth­ing against the own­ers of Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty that pro­vides a ser­vice and op­er­ates a busi­ness.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out:

“But be­cause the com­pa­ny is in con­flict with this par­tic­u­lar re­spon­si­bil­i­ty through this em­ploy­ee (Ramd­hanie) that has now been nom­i­nat­ed by her Ex­cel­len­cy to sit on a Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to se­lect, re­cruit, rec­om­mend a po­lice com­mis­sion­er and a deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er/s... that con­sti­tutes a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est.”

Mark said there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of ap­par­ent bias in this mat­ter.

“There is need for Her Ex­cel­len­cy to re­con­sid­er this nom­i­na­tion” and find a nom­i­nee.

The sec­ond nom­i­nee Mark named was At­tong who he said: “is the pres­i­dent” of the Hu­man Re­sources Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) up to 2018/2019.

Call­ing on At­tong to say if she is still pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion and “we would al­so like her to clear the air on whether she has been us­ing that of­fice to so­lic­it con­tracts not on­ly for HRMATT but for her own firm that is en­gaged in the pro­vi­sion of pro­fes­sion­al man­age­r­i­al lead­er­ship ser­vices.”

At­tong is an ac­coun­tant.

Mark asked if the firm At­tong rep­re­sents “have con­tracts with the T&T Gov­ern­ment.”

Mark showed a pho­to­graph of At­tong pos­ing with for­mer labour min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus in 2018 “where HRMATT of whom this la­dy is the pres­i­dent...and we would like to know whether as the sto­ry goes her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in 2018 was to so­lic­it con­tracts and work from the Min­istry of Labour for HRMATT and by ex­ten­sion her own pri­vate com­pa­ny.”

He said At­tong needs to come clean.

The third nom­i­nee Mark point­ed out was King who works for a wealth man­age­ment com­pa­ny named First­line Se­cu­ri­ties Ltd.

A pe­rusal of the com­pa­ny’s reg­istry found a mort­gage dat­ed No­vem­ber 2, 2017 in the name of In­ez In­vest­ment Ltd (IIL) as a bor­row­er.

Mark said he un­der­stands that IIL is owned by a promi­nent To­ba­go fam­i­ly which is close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with Row­ley.

He called on Row­ley to con­firm or de­ny this.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Cheryl Lala, com­mu­ni­ca­tion ad­vis­er to the Pres­i­dent was asked if the nom­i­nees had de­clared their in­ter­ests to the Pres­i­dent.

Lala of­fered no com­ment.

A few hours lat­er Lala sent a What­sApp mes­sage which stat­ed “as re­gards to your ear­li­er query, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent awaits the de­ci­sion of Par­lia­ment.”

Calls to Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Camille Rob­sin­son-Reg­is went unan­swered while a What­sApp mes­sage was al­so not read up to late yes­ter­day.

Re­peat­ed calls to Ramd­hanie’s cell­phone al­so went unan­swered.


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