RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has called on Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob to pro­vide an up­date on a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the il­le­gal with­draw­al of ex­plo­sives by a To­ba­go com­pa­ny with­out a valid per­mit.

Speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ vir­tu­al ral­ly on Sun­day, Mooni­lal ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of mak­ing “a naked grab for po­lit­i­cal con­trol of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.”

He al­so called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to say whether high po­lit­i­cal of­fice hold­ers had been bul­ly­ing the TTPS to pro­vide a blast­ing per­mit to the To­ba­go com­pa­ny.

Mooni­lal al­leged that a se­nior of­fi­cial at the com­pa­ny is a friend of Dr Row­ley.

“Af­ter sus­tained, pro­longed and ob­scene bul­ly­ing by two high-rank­ing mem­bers of the PNM lit­er­al­ly in­volved in in­flu­ence-ped­dling, the TTPS, through the of­fice of the CoP, er­ro­neous­ly is­sued a blast­ing per­mit dat­ed 27th Oc­to­ber 2020 with­out the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Blast­ing Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (BAC) or the Chief In­spec­tor,” Mooni­lal claimed.

He claimed the OSH Agency wrote to the CoP re­quest­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the mat­ter and to date, no rea­son has been giv­en.

“The act­ing CoP Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob re­vealed that the li­cense was in­deed is­sued in er­ror and arrange­ments would be made to with­draw it. To this day, I ask if this li­cense was with­drawn?” Mooni­lal asked.

He added, “To­day, I ask Mr Ja­cob to dis­close whether in the ab­sence of a CoP, any blast­ing per­mits and FUL have been is­sued to (name called) and oth­er se­lect­ed in­di­vid­u­als since we know that on­ly the CoP or an act­ing CoP can do so.” 

Mooni­lal al­so said, “The Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted in the Par­lia­ment that (name called) is his friend. We have no prob­lem with that. Our is­sue is when high of­fice hold­ers at­tempt to use their of­fice for the per­son­al ben­e­fits of friends and fam­i­ly in a man­ner that is wrong.”

He added, “We have no prob­lem with (name called) re­ceiv­ing any ben­e­fit from the state for him­self per­son­al­ly or his busi­ness to which he is law­ful­ly en­ti­tled.”

He al­so ac­cused the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment of spend­ing $35 mil­lion on a British le­gal and in­ves­ti­ga­tion team to tar­get his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

“I want to know which high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial sent the TTPS to Lon­don to meet this British team and in­struct the TTPS to con­cen­trate on Anil Roberts and Roodal Mooni­lal and no one else? Which Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial di­rect­ed the TTPS on how to cov­er up the mon­ey mov­ing from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to the TTPS?” he said.

“They in­struct­ed the po­lice on who to in­ves­ti­gate. I tell you this in light of a rev­e­la­tion I made a week be­fore the THA elec­tions that Row­ley even tried to get the TTPS to take away the firearm law­ful­ly in pos­ses­sion by Wat­son Duke,” Mooni­lal said.

The Prime Min­is­ter sub­se­quent­ly de­nied this al­le­ga­tion.

Mooni­lal al­so said the Gov­ern­ment had mis­man­aged the COVID cri­sis, not­ing that 436 peo­ple had died in three weeks.

Not­ing that To­ba­go had re­ject­ed the PNM, Mooni­lal said Trinidad must al­so do the same.