Government’s cost-cutting measures should include removing the Prime Minister’s picture from various items, including billboards, mugs, pictures, cards and vouchers. PNM Senator Faris Al-Rawi said so yesterday. He did so during Senate debate on Government’s Procurement Bill, slamming the PM on various issues.
Al-Rawi said there were billboards all over T&T with pictures of the Prime Minister and there were government giveaways daily, including mugs and other items, with a picture of the PM on them also. “I would suggest in the austerity cuts, we can do without pictures of the Prime Minister on pictures and everything else,” he added.
Al-Rawi also said he was “advised” (without giving the source) that it cost Government $33 million to bring forward the completion date for the Golconda section of the Point Fortin Highway in time for Divali as the PM had wanted. He asked if chairman of the National Infrastructure Development Company of T&T (Nidco) Dr Carson Charles or the Prime Minister would be called to account for the alleged $33 million cost.
He also said the “Prime Minister had the gall to claim paternity—“maternity or authorship”—of the Parliament’s new Standing Orders. He said former House Speaker Barry Sinanan and PNM’s Camille Robinson-Regis had drafted that and “so Madame Prime Minister, have the intellectual honesty to admit where this comes from.” He said the PNM had concerns on the bill, including its funding, operationalisation and lack of regulations to accompany it.
He said the PNM also wanted disposal of property to be clarified and factored into the bill and wanted the proposed procurement regulator to be independent and insulated from Government. Al-Rawi discounted arguments by Planning Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie on PNM’s non-co-operation on the bill. He said the PNM had always felt it was law in the right direction and PNM leader Keith Rowley had instructed his senators to vote for the bill.
Tewarie, piloting the bill, had said it was the same one passed in the Lower House recently and which had also been passed by all senators earlier in the year. However, that bill had lapsed with the end of the last parliamentary session. He noted Opposition PNM members had also voted for the bill in the Senate. Tewarie said he did not understand why the Opposition did not want to vote for it in the Lower House but he understood where they were coming from.
He said given how well the Senate usually had a consensus, he would be intrigued to see how the PNM Senators moved in the Upper House on the bill this time.