(Trinidad Express) The appointment of Trinidad Government Senator and Minister of Planning, Restructuring and Gender Affairs, Mary King was to be revoked by President Maxwell Richards yesterday afternoon.
This comes following a meeting Prime Minis-ter Kamla Persad-Bissessar held with President Richards at 11.30 a.m. yesterday to discuss evidence that implicated King in the inappropriate awarding of a TT$100,000 contract to a company, Ixanos, in which King’s family has an interest. Persad-Bissessar was quoted as saying “new evidence came to light following an investigation conducted into the matter by the Attorney General Anand Ramlogan”. She explained that her decision to remove King as both a senator and government minister was based on that new evidence.
The Prime Minister said she would have formalised King’s removal by sending a written request to President Richards yesterday afternoon.
Pressure was mounting for senior Government Minister Mary King to go, as on Monday her own Cabinet colleague and Congress of the People (COP) ally, Sport Minister Anil Roberts, called on her to resign “without further delay”
Roberts’s call came in the face of revelations published exclusively in the Sunday Express that she participated in the invitation and evaluation process of the award of a TT$100,000 contract to a company, Ixanos, in which her family has an interest, a matter deemed “highly inappropriate” by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Roberts called a news conference on Monday at his Ministry’s office specifically to give his views on the King controversy.
He said the COP must ensure that the highest standards of corporate governance, integrity, accountability and transparency are upheld at all times.
He said King, a member of the COP, contributed to the development of COP’s principles and it therefore gave him no pleasure to “call on Senator Mary King, …to do the right thing without further delay”. “And the right thing is to resign immediately,” he said.
Roberts, who said he was speaking for himself as well as for his “team” of COP supporters, explained that since he had put his hat in the ring for the COP leadership, he thought it incumbent on him to speak on the issue.
