Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion MP Bar­ry Padarath wants Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to say if he was the per­son who al­leged­ly in­struct­ed that two mega com­pa­nies be pulled from a list to be pub­lished, of cus­tomers ow­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), bil­lions of dol­lars.

“The Min­is­ter must al­so say if the own­ers of these com­pa­nies are re­ceiv­ing state con­tracts un­der oth­er names—what is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween them and Gov­ern­ment?” Padarath added at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing.

Padarath said Gon­za­les “must go since every state en­ter­prise un­der his purview is in chaos and mis­man­age­ment.”

Padarath said the two big com­pa­nies are a wa­ter park and a drink­able wa­ter com­pa­ny. Ask­ing if they were be­ing pulled from a list to be pub­lished, of cus­tomers ow­ing WASA, he not­ed at the same time, the HDC is on a “blame and shame” thrust which will af­fect the vul­ner­a­ble un­able to pay.

Padarath asked if the is­sue of the com­pa­nies was the re­al rea­son WASA CEO Shur­land Shep­pard was sus­pend­ed.

“Is he be­ing used as a vol­un­tary scape­goat to pro­tect the per­son who gave him the in­struc­tions?” he added, seek­ing an­swers if there’s a “close re­la­tion­ship” be­tween the Min­is­ter and CEO.

Padarath al­so slammed Gon­za­les con­cern­ing the find­ings of the team which in­ves­ti­gat­ed the Feb­ru­ary 16 out­age.

He not­ed the re­port said there was no Cri­sis Com­man­der in charge. Padarath not­ed that PNM Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe in her first Bud­get state­ment had said, “We are in charge and you will deal with it.”

“But this re­port said no­body was in charge (dur­ing the out­age). So Sham­fa Cud­joe, Kei­th Row­ley, Fitzger­ald Hinds, Stu­art Young—while you beat your chests loud­ly that ‘we’re in charge’, this re­port states no­body was in charge. And if no­body was in charge in that sit­u­a­tion, some­body has to go. And that per­son is the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter.”

Padarath queried how Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (head­ing a team eval­u­at­ing TSTT’s as­sets) could say she’s un­aware of the sale of TSTT as­sets when he said as­sets are ad­ver­tised pub­licly by sev­er­al re­al es­tate agents. He held up doc­u­ments on that. He queried prop­er­ty sales while he claimed TSTT’s leas­ing prop­er­ties for mil­lions from JC Land­ings.

“I in­vite the pub­lic to see who the di­rec­tors of this com­pa­ny is.”

Padarath lat­er told Guardian Me­dia he wel­comed Gary Grif­fith’s Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion par­ty but he said T&T con­tin­ues be­ing a two-par­ty sys­tem and he didn’t see NTA tak­ing away from UNC’s base since mem­bers have ral­lied around UNC’s leader.

UNC MP Ani­ta Haynes ex­pressed con­cerns re­gard­ing safe­ty in schools from health is­sues to school vi­o­lence. She said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has tak­en a hands-off ap­proach and was derelict in its du­ty to stu­dents, from in­fra­struc­tur­al con­cerns to not mak­ing prop­er pol­i­cy as stu­dents en­tered the phys­i­cal school sys­tem.

Haynes said Ed­u­ca­tion opt­ed for a” long slow painful road” to treat with school vi­o­lence which every­one al­ways knew ex­ist­ed and was dor­mant dur­ing school clo­sure.

Haynes said con­flict res­o­lu­tion, anger man­age­ment and prop­er cop­ing skills should have been em­pha­sised but Ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ued un­der-re­sourc­ing the Stu­dents Sup­port Ser­vices di­vi­sion and there were bud­get cuts and un­filled va­can­cies.

There should al­so be a con­sul­ta­tive, tar­get­ed ap­proach if TTPS was in­volved—but she not­ed TTPS it­self is un­der-re­sourced and un­able to fill its va­can­cies and now has to as­sist schools al­so.

Haynes slammed the prospect that chil­dren might be crim­i­nal­ized by the Min­istry’s thrust in that re­gard and car­ry life­long stig­ma if the sit­u­a­tion wasn’t han­dled prop­er­ly.

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