Gail Alexan­der

If Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley doesn’t re­move Fos­ter Cum­mings from his Cab­i­net, he should at least shift the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er for Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment from his purview, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al said yes­ter­day.

At a UNC me­dia brief­ing, Lutch­me­di­al, com­ment­ing on re­cent me­dia re­ports about Cum­mings, said there are ques­tions to be an­swered by of­fi­cials of Ven­ture Cred­it Union (VCU).

“Whilst Mr Cum­mings re­it­er­ates fre­quent­ly that many of these trans­ac­tions took place be­fore he was a min­is­ter, he was in fact at the time a PNM par­lia­men­tar­i­an and a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial with­in the PNM which was in gov­ern­ment at the time,” she said.

“The chal­lenge here is that the reg­u­la­tor who ought to be ex­am­in­ing the prac­tices of VCU, the Com­mis­sion­er for Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment, falls un­der the purview of Min­is­ter Cum­mings. This of­fice was re­moved from the Labour Min­istry where it pre­vi­ous­ly resided and placed di­rect­ly un­der the watch of Mr Cum­mings.

“If af­ter every­thing that’s said and re­vealed through the me­dia, the Prime Min­is­ter is still con­tent­ed to have Fos­ter Cum­mings as min­is­ter and part of his Cab­i­net, at a min­i­mum he ought to re­move the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er for Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment from the purview of Min­is­ter Cum­mings and place that port­fo­lio else­where.

“The is­sue of the su­per­vi­sion of cred­it unions and their lend­ing prac­tices was the sub­ject of a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry. The al­leged is­sues in­volv­ing Min­is­ter Cum­mings and VCU re­quire a hard look by the Com­mis­sion­er for Co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment and there’s no way that that could hap­pen if the Com­mis­sion­er is un­der the di­rect watch of Min­is­ter Cum­mings,” she al­leged.

Lutch­me­di­al said a le­gal team is re­search­ing the is­sue, fil­ing many Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion queries and she has filed for ju­di­cial re­view of one mat­ter. She ap­plied to Ude­cott for copies of cheques made out to a com­pa­ny which had no share cap­i­tal “based on doc­u­ments we have”, she claimed.

“But by 2022 they were paid $19 mil­lion from Ude­cott. I ap­plied for copies of the cheques made out to the com­pa­ny and Ude­cott re­fused. I’ve filed a ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter and that’s now be­fore the court.”