RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he will not re­spond to al­le­ga­tions from Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that he (Dr Row­ley) spent $400,000 of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on per­son­al busi­ness when he went to col­lect an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from Howard Uni­ver­si­ty last year.

The Prime Min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to rev­e­la­tions from Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that he spent $10.6 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el over 36 months.

When con­tact­ed for a re­sponse by Guardian Me­dia, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “I am not pre­pared to re­spond to any­thing Dr Mooni­lal has to say about tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey un­til he com­plies with the court or­der and puts in his de­fence in the EM­BD mat­ter, where mil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars are yet to be ac­count­ed for.”

But Dr Mooni­lal coun­tered his claim, say­ing, “I am nev­er in con­tempt of any court pro­ceed­ings. But if Row­ley wish­es to use a ten-year-old PNM case to hide be­hind like a fig leaf, that is his busi­ness. We will dig deep­er in­to those trips.”

Dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day Night fo­rum held at the Lengua TIA Is­lamia Pri­ma­ry School in Princes Town, Dr Mooni­lal said he filed a writ­ten ques­tion in Par­lia­ment in­quir­ing how many times the Prime Min­is­ter trav­elled over­seas be­tween Sep­tem­ber 20, 2020, and Feb­ru­ary 29, 2024. He al­so asked about the cost of each trip, in­clud­ing ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals, ground trans­port for the Prime Min­is­ter and his en­tourage, and oth­er re­lat­ed ex­pens­es.

The an­swer was sup­plied last Fri­day in Par­lia­ment, and Dr Mooni­lal pre­sent­ed its find­ings to sup­port­ers, say­ing Dr Row­ley spent a stag­ger­ing $10.6 mil­lion over that pe­ri­od.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter’s five-day jour­ney to the Unit­ed States in Jan­u­ary 2024 cost $818,262.97.

De­scrib­ing the $10.6 mil­lion tab as “shock­ing and scan­dalous,” Dr Mooni­lal added, “That is al­most $300,000 per month in for­eign trav­el. This is un­ten­able. It is scan­dalous that a Prime Min­is­ter can spend $300,000 per month on for­eign trav­el.”

He said none of those trips brought any ben­e­fit to the peo­ple of T&T.

“This fig­ure, of course, does not in­clude the trav­el of his com­pan­ion. Mr Stu­art Young, who pos­es as a Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, but he’s more of a go­pher,” Mooni­lal said.

He not­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter’s trip to Bar­ba­dos to spend one day at­tend­ing “a bank­ing meet­ing” with (con­gress­woman) Max­ine Wa­ters cost tax­pay­ers $127,000.

“The Prime Min­is­ter went to Wash­ing­ton in April 2022 as well to meet what is called high-lev­el of­fi­cials of the Gov­ern­ment of the USA, which cost $382,000 for a three-day trip, over $100,000 per day,” Dr Mooni­lal said. The crowd ex­pressed shock at the bill, shout­ing, “Ground him.”

Dr Mooni­lal added, “The Prime Min­is­ter ought to stop it. Cut it out now! I think we should clip his wings, ground him, seize his fre­quent fly­er cards to en­sure that he re­mains on the ground and face the prob­lems that Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans face dai­ly, which are crime, in­se­cu­ri­ty, pover­ty, and job­less­ness.”

He said while po­lice of­fi­cers did not have toi­let pa­per in the sta­tions and the hos­pi­tals did not have med­i­cine, the Prime Min­is­ter was trav­el­ling in­ces­sant­ly us­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.