UNC charges ‘payback time’ — Rowley: Nothing wrong with that

Planning and Development Minister Dr Keith Rowley said yesterday that there was nothing improper about Govern-ment’s decision to hire Kenrick Burgess and to pay his company $90,000 to run the Project Management Unit at the Ministry of Education. He also said that the Opposition UNC suddenly seemed to have discovered that corruption was wrong. Rowley stressed: “But they would never to able to come here and say that any of us in these chairs stole money,” he said. “Ask the people at WASA, Ask Jackie Lazarus,”  Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar shot back. He was speaking in the House of Representatives yesterday during debate on the Local Government Elections Order.

Earlier Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar charged that Government’s decision to pay Burgess $90,000 a month was a “payback” for his Report on the Biche High School. She said despite what Burgess wrote in the Report — “that the school was going to fall” — the school was still standing.  The decision of the PNM to hire him was a clear case of “payback time”, she argued. But Rowley said the Government never had to pay off Burgess for anything because the Burgess Report was commissioned under the last Government. Rowley explained that the IDB, which was funding the construction programme for the schools, was so horrified at what was taking place that it hired Burgess to do an independent investigation of the school-building programme. He said it was the IDB which paid Burgess.

Saying that the PNM had nothing to do with the Burgess Report, Rowley said all the PNM Government did was to bring to the country’s attention the fact that there was a report which pointed to gross misconduct and dereliction of duty. Rowley said maybe if the last UNC Government had established a project management unit (such as the one set up by Burgess), schools would not have cost what they cost under the UNC. He said this Government had embarked on a $2 billion construction programme to put a solid  education structure in place and this was why a proper management unit to ensure that the project is brought in properly, on time and within budget.

Rowley also slammed the UNC for its “sudden” discovery that there were problems with the configuration of the local government election boundaries. Noting that the UNC had been in Government for six years and fought two local government elections, Rowley said the UNC also took the position that the EBC should not be criticised and that it was sacrosanct. But now, the same UNC was asking the government to shred an EBC report. He said it was hard to take the UNC seriously in such a situation. “They have no credibility,” he said, adding (it was a case of the UNC saying) “Today the EBC is sacrosanct. Tomorrow mash it up,”

He said it was the same way that the UNC “all of a sudden” knew about reform of the constitution. “And all of a sudden my friend from Couva North knows corruption is a bad thing. All of a sudden they know about equity. Where was the equity when you were in government?” he asked, drawing supportive table-thumping. Rowley said for four years “until Dhanraj went to jail”, the Diego Martin Regional Corpora-tion got not one cent from the Road Improvement Fund. He said every year for three years, the UNC government collected $50 million in the RIF and not one cent on no yard of road in Diego Martin was spent even though that was the area with the most cars. “Where was equity then?” Rowley thundered. “In those days it was ‘we time now’.

We in the PNM subscribe to the fact that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is for all the people of Trinidad and Tobago. And if today you hear them talking about equity and lack of equity is just they conscience bothering them,” he roared. He said the UNC spent all their time trying to redress some perceived imbalance and did some of the most inequitable acts. “They thought they were in government forever and so they did this country all manner of evil. Now they are in Opposition all of a sudden they want to bring down the Angel Gabriel to paint his wings,” Rowley said, provoking a mixture of laughter and desk thumping from the government bench. Looking directly at Panday, he said people wouldn’t believe that he was the Prime Minister who oversaw the most corrupt government in the history of this country. “Half his government in jail, some on their way to the country and others are to go soon,” he said. “But the one thing they looking for they would not find...is that money is being stolen...You will never be able to come here and say that any of us in these chairs has stolen any government money,” Rowley concluded.