There was an at­tempt to sab­o­tage an air­craft at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed on Thurs­day night.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) post-Bud­get meet­ing in Bel­mont, he list­ed the in­ci­dent as one of sev­er­al at­tempts to “sab­o­tage the suc­cess­es” of his ad­min­is­tra­tion

“Some­body went in the re­pair shop at Pi­ar­co Air­port, opened a pan­el on a plane and cut the wires on the pan­el. Had that air­craft gone up in the air, ... you know what would have been the con­se­quences?” Row­ley said.

He said the in­ci­dent oc­curred some time ago but had not been made pub­lic. He of­fered no fur­ther de­tails.

“There are peo­ple in this coun­try who find that the nor­mal dose of bad news is not enough and when it is not enough they will cre­ate some for you,” he said.

Row­ley al­so re­count­ed an in­ci­dent at the open­ing of the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba where they was an at­tempt to block the high­way to pre­vent peo­ple from north Trinidad get­ting to the venue

“And some of them got in­side and in­stead of watch­ing the crick­et, they went, take off their clothes and stuff it down in the sew­er so the sew­er could be choked to flood the box­es in the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um. You all re­mem­ber that?” he asked

He said there had al­so been van­dal­ism of toi­lets on one of seabridge fer­ries and, just re­cent­ly, pumps in­stalled at Bam­boo No 1 to pre­vent flood­ing in that com­mu­ni­ty were set on fire.

“If you know Bam­boo No 1, it is a bowl-shaped area. The riv­er is on one side ... so when­ev­er it rains and there is a lot of wa­ter from heavy rain, it nat­u­ral­ly set­tles in­side of Bam­boo No 1 and that wa­ter will rise and rise in the hous­es be­cause it can­not get out.

“Be­cause the hous­es are low­er than the bank of the riv­er and so on, we have two pumps, big pumps, that pump the wa­ter out in­to the riv­er so there is no flood­ing. Some­body went the oth­er night and burn out the pumps, burn out the elec­tri­cal pan­els.

“All you have to ask your­self is who stands to ben­e­fit if Bam­boo No 1 is flood­ed? It has to be the peo­ple who make a spe­cial­i­ty of flood pol­i­tics,” he said.

Row­ley, who de­fend­ed mea­sures in the 2020/21 Bud­get, said of those op­posed to the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, the agency that will re­place the Board of In­land Rev­enue and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, that “a rea­son­able ar­gu­ment can be made that they are for tax eva­sion.” He said his Gov­ern­ment is go­ing for­ward with es­tab­lish­ing the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty be­cause it is good for the coun­try.

In the case of the Port of Port-of-Spain, Row­ley de­scribed it as an un­der­per­form­ing as­set.

“If we have a prop­er, mod­ern port in Port-of-Spain, it be­comes a big­ger con­trib­u­tor to our na­tion­al econ­o­my. Try as we might, the best place for the Port of Port-of-Spain is not in the Min­istry of Works. We tried that and it has failed,” he said.

“We have come to the con­clu­sion that the best thing for the port is to put the port in pri­vate hands where you get the max­i­mum con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go by hav­ing an ef­fi­cient port run by the pri­vate sec­tor.”