Kamla: PNM spending $100 million per day

Addressing a UNC public meeting at St David’s RC School in Kelly Village, Caroni, on Monday night, Persad-Bissessar said Caroni residents and the population as a whole could take little comfort in the release of kidnapped businesswoman Vanessa Sookhai-Singh on Sunday, since other kidnap victims remain in the hands of their abductors. Claiming that the PNM has spent more than $90 billion over the last three years in office and is spending almost $100 million daily, Persad-Bissessar said the population was being fooled about the true state of crime in TT today. She alleged that more than 1,000 persons have been murdered in TT from 2002 to 2005, this year’s total murder figure stands at 265 and no one has been convicted of murder for the year.

Persad-Bissessar reminded party supporters that when the UNC was in office, there were only 120 murders in TT but conceded that these were "too many of course." She slammed Government’s efforts to provide law enforcement agencies with crime-fighting technology and claimed that $40 million of taxpayers’ monies had been wasted on the Special Anti-Crime Unit’s surveillance airship. National Security Minister Martin Joseph has said the actual cost of the airship is $26 million and it will prove vital in Government’s ongoing efforts to deal with crime in TT. Charging that the PNM was tough on ole talk and rhetoric but "soft on crime," Persad-Bissessar called on Joseph to resign and for Prime Minister Patrick Manning to fire him if he did not. The UNC MP also criticised Education Minister Hazel Manning, claiming her incompetence resulted in 24 schools being closed and 10,000 children being denied a school place on the first day of the new academic year on Monday.

Persad-Bissessar declared that the Prime Minister would never replace his wife as Education Minister because he did not "have the guts" to do so.