Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit says if Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox has in­for­ma­tion about cor­rup­tion in the for­mer Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment’s (MPSD) Tar­get­ed Con­di­tion­al Cash Trans­fer Pro­gramme (Food Card), she should take it to the po­lice.

Re­spond­ing to Cox’s al­le­ga­tion dur­ing the 2024 Na­tion­al Bud­get de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Mo­hit said if Cox had tak­en the in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice, she was now com­pro­mis­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by rais­ing it in Par­lia­ment.

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion, Cox said Mo­hit was an em­ploy­ee in the MPSD’s So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion in 2012 when the Cab­i­net, through the min­istry, al­leged­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed the sys­tem for dis­trib­ut­ing so­cial grants. Cox charged that the MPSD dis­trib­uted Food Cards to re­cip­i­ents worth $510, but checks re­vealed the min­istry could al­lo­cate up to $30,000 per day on a card.

Mo­hit said she worked un­der the MPSD, start­ing as a case­work­er in the Food Card Pro­gramme in 2012 and mov­ing up to a li­ai­son of­fi­cer. The for­mer Ch­agua­nas may­or said she worked with Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing her time in the MPSD, and any of them could say they re­ceived the best ser­vice from her.

Mo­hit said she worked through­out T&T un­der the MPSD’s guide­lines. There­fore, she was up­set with Cox, say­ing her state­ment was heavy on in­sin­u­a­tion and low on facts.

Mo­hit said Cox was try­ing to jus­ti­fy why Gov­ern­ment want­ed to take away food cards. How­ev­er, she said she lived a life of ser­vice and noth­ing would throw her off.

“The min­is­ter’s be­hav­iour in this ho­n­ourable house to­day can be de­scribed as noth­ing but ir­re­spon­si­ble. Madame Speak­er, I dear say I know noth­ing of what the min­is­ter spoke about here to­day, and I want to tell the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, do not ever try to dirty my name,” Mo­hit said.

Mo­hit said she saved her salary by not buy­ing lunch and in­stead drank wa­ter to pur­chase a ve­hi­cle to do the MPSD’s job when she re­alised the work­load. The PNM took of­fice in 2015, but she said it wait­ed un­til 2023 to speak about a Mas­ter­card she knew noth­ing about.

“So what hap­pened to the pre­vi­ous years? Did you now de­cide to dig in a cup­board? Madame Speak­er, this is their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their plan to take back the food cards from our cit­i­zens and cut the Food Card pro­gramme.”

Mo­hit said Cox should have ex­plained why so many cheques and food cards went miss­ing from the min­istry un­der her (Cox’s) watch.

She said the Bud­get rep­re­sent­ed an ab­ject fail­ure of Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to ad­dress cit­i­zens’ re­al chal­lenges. She said while Gov­ern­ment claims there are pos­i­tives in the Bud­get, sus­tain­able job cre­ation mea­sures are ab­sent. She said se­nior cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to face prob­lems as Gov­ern­ment lacks pro­vi­sions to pro­vide af­ford­able and vi­tal drugs. Mo­hit said the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme had failed as med­ica­tion is of­ten un­avail­able. She said health in­sti­tu­tions al­so of­ten tell pa­tients that the drugs are too ex­pen­sive for them to pro­vide.