(Trinidad Express) Port of Spain Mayor Louis Lee Sing yesterday broke his silence on the now contentious private meeting between National Security Minister Jack Warner and “gangsters” from Laventille two weeks ago.
Lee Sing, in an interview yesterday, claimed Warner spoke with the men about providing 100 jobs in the area.
“One of the concerns raised by the guys was that they needed jobs in the affected communities—those communities affected by crime—and I remember distinctly asking, well, how many jobs, and they agreed that if they got 100 jobs to start off, that would help to bring down the tempo. Minister Warner did take note of that and did indicate that some of the jobs could come from the ministry, the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and some from other places,” Lee Sing said.
“So you can understand how confused I am that the events have taken the turn it has,” he said.
Warner, in a brief telephone interview yesterday, said the offer of jobs to the gang leaders was “total news to me”.
“This guy (Lee Sing) is a dreamer,” Warner said.
That meeting and the subsequently aborted second meeting last week have now become a bone of contention between the two former friends as Warner has since accused Lee Sing of seeking to “entrap” him into meeting with known criminals while Lee Sing has countered that Warner was aware of both the “message and the messenger” at that first meeting.
“At the time I invited Minister Warner to meet with the gentleman in question was that it was largely a National Security concern. At the meeting, therefore, I could not help but recognise that the issues being addressed were, in fact, so driven, and therefore, it was a natural extension that Minister Warner had sought to have a further meeting,” Lee Sing said.
He said he was not aware of what has happened at or since that second meeting at the St Paul’s Street Indoor Facility in Laventille last Wednesday.
Though he said Warner was expected to attend, he (Warner) dispatched Keith Renaud, director of Office of Law Enforcement Policy (OLEP) instead, saying then that Renaud would be preparing a report for him on the meeting.
Lee Sing said he “was choosing deliberately” to not make connections between the unfulfilled job promise and the recent crime activity in the Laventille area.
“Both the elite and the Government in this country are failing the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.
“Governance requires a certain type of behaviour which we are not now seeing from the Government, so we have Government without governance, and when you find that happening in a country, you are not only heading for trouble, but you are in trouble, and I truly believe that Trinidad and Tobago is in trouble as we speak,” he said.
Public Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke, who attended both meetings, yesterday would not confirm if there was any job offers to the gang leaders and asked to be left out of the issue.
“They are action men, and I staying out of that. The Government’s job is the promise and delivery of jobs. People judge them on that. Lee Sing have power too,” Duke said.
