Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has instructed Finance Minister Colm Imbert to institute an audit into the affairs of the State agency, National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB), which is under the microscope for awarding millions of dollars in questionable contracts and to unregistered companies.
He said he had also instructed Imbert that if the audit proved individuals or organisations received money under false pretences, “then ask them to pay it back.”
Addressing a PNM town meeting in the San Fernando West constituency on Tuesday night, Rowley also identified NLCB and the TDC as two national State companies which spent over one million to slander him in the lead-up to the 2015 election campaign.
He told the meeting, which was also addressed by Housing Minister Randall Mitchell and Social Development Minister Cherrie-Ann Critchlow Cockburn, that was an example of how public monies were being spent in T&T with no one being held accountable.
He spoke about an inflation in the cost of housing over the past five years from $350,000 to $1.3 million and food card fraud which would see the Government saving over $100 million as a result of weeding out people who were not qualified card holders.
The Prime Minister said the owner of a supermarket chain told a friend his business was down by $12 million a month because of the PNM’s administration tightening up of the food card arrangement from what previously existed.
“The abuse was astounding,” he said of the food card programme
Recalling Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar description of Government dipping into the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund (HSF) as a “bran tub”, Rowley countered: “The bran tub was at the NLCB and that is widespread all over the public sector... all over.”
In a wide-ranging 50-minute address, Rowley said corruption was a problem in T&T.
“I warned you all before, if the top of the management of the country is corrupt, people who normally will behave properly underneath, sees what is going on at the top and if the priest could play who is me... so all of them start to play.” He said what he was now seeing would have started in 2013.
“I have every reason to believe that it was the tone and tenor of 2011 and 2012 that encouraged people to behave like that because they believed they would get away with it, he added.”
He said at present a significant part of the population had a negative concept of the Government and Opposition because they have a sense things were going wrong and wanted to know why Government was not doing something about it.
Rowley said authority was segregated and Government could not interfere with the work of the police or the Judiciary but could only look on and hope justice was served once there were arrests and matters were taken to court.
However, he was quick to add that his government was not threatening to lock up anybody. He said the most they could do as elected members was to ensure government’s intervention to find out what was going on and fix what was wrong.
“One of the big challenges we have as a Government is who to trust. We just do not know who to trust. Some of the very people who are supposed to engender trust in the society are causing you to lose faith,” he added.