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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Senator refutes UNC claims over state contracts

by

Gail Alexander
2168 days ago
20190819
Foster Cummings

Foster Cummings

PNM sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings on Mon­day re­fut­ed in­sin­u­a­tions by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that there are ques­tions con­cern­ing con­tracts he ob­tained from state or­gan­i­sa­tions.

At UNC’s Na­tion­al Con­gress meet­ing last Sun­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised ques­tions about Cum­mings and three com­pa­nies, Cum­mings and As­so­ciates Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Pi­cal Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd.

Yes­ter­day, Cum­mings said he had Cum­mings and As­so­ciates since 1998 and Pi­cal Ser­vices since 2001. He said he did not own Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd but on­ly had a busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with that en­ti­ty.”

“I’m not do­ing any­thing in the way she’s in­sin­u­at­ing, ab­solute­ly not. The fact is I have been in busi­ness since 1998 so this (get­ting con­tracts) isn’t a re­cent de­vel­op­ment—I’m an es­tab­lished busi­ness­man and that sta­tus pre-dates my ap­point­ment as a Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor.”

Cum­mings said the UNC was in pan­ic mode fol­low­ing last Sat­ur­day’s launch of PNM’s new Cen­tral Trinidad of­fice.” Cum­mings was re­cent­ly reap­point­ed to the Sen­ate af­ter Garvin Si­mon­ette re­signed over a DUI charge.

“The Op­po­si­tion Leader should make bet­ter use of her time, apol­o­gis­ing to T&T for the scan­dals in­volv­ing gross mis­man­age­ment in her tenure,” he said.

Cit­ing doc­u­ments filed in the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­istry’s Com­pa­ny Reg­istry, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cum­mings, the PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary, and his wife were list­ed as di­rec­tors and share­hold­ers of Cum­mings and As­so­ciates and Pi­cal Ser­vices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged Pi­cal was grant­ed a con­tract from UDe­COTT for the de­mo­li­tion of the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion in June. The Op­po­si­tion Leader ques­tioned whether Cum­mings was be­ing favoured by state agen­cies.

UDe­COTT in a state­ment said the com­pa­ny fol­lowed its ten­der process in the award of two con­tracts to com­pa­nies owned by Cum­mings. The com­pa­ny said con­tracts were ap­proved for the de­mo­li­tion of the po­lice sta­tion and the con­struc­tion of the In­di­an Trail Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, in Cou­va.

It said its ten­der rules and reg­u­la­tions are trans­par­ent and can stand scruti­ny.

Row­ley in a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia last Sun­day said was “Once Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar calls my name in any wrong­do­ing I re­view it with an eye to re­fer­ring it to my at­tor­ney, oth­er than that I have noth­ing to re­spond to.”


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