State-owned Vehicle Management Corporation of T&T (VMCOTT) has awarded a $2.1 million security contract to a very recently established company. Amalgamated Security Services Ltd, long in the business, was bypassed. This was disclosed in the Senate yesterday by PNM Senator Avinash Singh in his maiden budget contribution. Singh described the VMCOTT contract as “strange enough”. He said the new company got the nod after tenders went out for the contract for security services.
He said the permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security, under which VMCOTT falls, questioned the integrity of the evaluation committee. Singh claimed no one on the committee was qualified in the area of security. He claimed there are also questionable contracts in other state agencies but promised to reveal them at a later time. Singh also charged that there are questionable practices in the Caroni Green Initiative.
Earlier this year, Cabinet approved $22 million for Caroni Green Ltd, a State enterprise, for the development of 4,000 acres of former Caroni Ltd lands for food production. Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj said the initiative was designed to give T&T safe locally produced food. But Singh said farmers who had been selling their produce, with the goal of getting a profit, to Caroni Green Ltd, have not been getting receipts with the company’s letterhead.
He also demanded evidence that citizens really benefited from 290 tons of food produced by farmers. Reading from a prepared speech interspersed with green verbs, Singh said the 2015 budget added fuel to the dangerous “give me syndrome”. He did not have a problem with giving underprivileged babies $500 but wondered what was to become of them after the one year of grants expired.
Supporting the views of civil society groups, he said the measures in the grant were not constructively reviewed and not sustainable. He said $6.994 billion was allocated to the National Security Ministry but the crime situation was worsening. Citizens seem to be competing with the Middle East and were raping and beheading each other, he said. On education, he said qualified people seeking employment in the state sector were being rejected because they did not know somebody.
He claimed the positions were being filled by people known to the employers. Singh said the People’s Partnership had reached the end of the road. He got a round of desk thumping from his colleagues for saying that. Following him, Independent Senator Anthony Vierra said, based on what he heard from the Government, he would like to believe T&T was heading in the right direction.
Commending Planning Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie’s budget contribution, he said if the goal was to make T&T more inclusive and ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth, then he supported the budget. He wanted to see a widening of the middle class and a shrinking of the rich, he said. Vierra said the fact that there were no new taxes in the budget nor austerity measures should not be taken for granted.