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War of words over gang contracts rages

Rowley fires back at Roodal

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is the on­ly known min­is­ter who was pho­tographed while pro­mot­ing gang busi­ness.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Row­ley fired back at Mooni­lal, who ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of award­ing lu­cra­tive con­tracts to gang lead­ers, not­ing this in turn was un­der­min­ing the po­lice’s war against crim­i­nal gangs.

On Sun­day, Mooni­lal, the MP for Oropouche East, called on Row­ley to ter­mi­nate con­tracts with the gang lead­ers and take ac­tion against any min­is­ter who gave such con­tracts. He said Row­ley con­tin­ued to har­bour se­nior Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters with known links to peo­ple be­fore the courts and oth­er al­leg­ed gang lead­ers.

Re­spond­ing to Mooni­lal, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment has been and con­tin­ues to fight crim­i­nal con­duct at every lev­el and will con­tin­ue to sup­port law en­force­ment in all their law­ful ef­forts to rid the coun­try of this scourge in all its forms.

“In re­sponse to the scan­dalous be­hav­iour of the UNC, a par­ty that has yet again been caught re­cruit­ing and pro­mot­ing crim­i­nals in the po­lit­i­cal process, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ac­cus­es the Gov­ern­ment of award­ing lu­cra­tive con­tracts to un­savoury char­ac­ters.

“This com­ing from Dr Mooni­lal is laugh­ably hyp­o­crit­i­cal, since he is the on­ly known min­is­ter of any gov­ern­ment who used tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to pay a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to fol­low him around to pho­to­graph and pro­mote him in these ac­tiv­i­ties and cur­rent­ly is the on­ly pho­to we have of any min­is­ter pro­mot­ing that for which he now says is an ac­tion which un­der­mines the ef­fort of the po­lice. What an epiphany!”

In 2013, Mooni­lal, then hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter, was pho­tographed when shak­ing the hands of Ken­neth “Span­ish” Ro­driguez dur­ing a vis­it to the site of the Dun­can Street Po­lice Post, then still un­der con­struc­tion. On Mon­day, Ro­driguez, dubbed a com­mu­ni­ty leader, along with An­cel “Chemist” Vil­lafana, ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cher­ril-Anne An­toine in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion. They were picked up dur­ing the po­lice’s an­ti-gang op­er­a­tion last week.

In his re­sponse yes­ter­day, Row­ley said con­tracts are not award­ed by any min­is­ters in his Gov­ern­ment. He said that prac­tice was a fea­ture of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship and was a ma­jor stim­u­lus to the ram­pant cor­rup­tion that was the hall­mark of their 2010-2015 tenure. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the PM said, min­is­ters even col­lect­ed the cheque pay­ments owed to con­trac­tors, who then had to bar­gain for the re­lease of such funds.

“Dr Mooni­lal more than any­one else knows that this Gov­ern­ment knows that. He al­so speaks self-right­eous­ly about the trou­ble­some is­sue of pet­ty crim­i­nals get­ting Gov­ern­ment con­tracts, but is ab­solute­ly silent on the pres­ence of crim­i­nals on the UNC po­lit­i­cal plat­form and in the Par­lia­ment.”

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Image:  richdubose0 (Pexels)