Trinidad MP says targeted by gang for $$ over road projects

 (Trinidad Guardian) A Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter pub­licly dis­closed on Monday that he had to seek po­lice pro­tec­tion af­ter a crim­i­nal gang threat­ened him so that he could help arrange a por­tion of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar State con­tract in the Moru­ga dis­trict.

The dis­clo­sure by Lovell Fran­cis, a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, came a few days af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as­sert­ed that gang lead­ers can ten­der for State con­tracts and it was the po­lice job to charge them for be­ing in­volved in crime.

The state­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter is in stark con­trast to that of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith who says that State fund­ing of crim­i­nal gangs was em­bold­en­ing crim­i­nals and im­ped­ing the po­lice’s abil­i­ty to get a han­dle in an out-of-con­trol gang war­fare which has been blamed for the ma­jor­i­ty of the 298 mur­ders com­mit­ted this year.

Fran­cis chose Face­book to an­nounce a lone gang op­er­at­ing in his con­stituen­cy has been in­tim­i­dat­ing, ex­tort­ing and bul­ly­ing State con­trac­tors un­der­tak­ing work on the $176 mil­lion Moru­ga Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Project.

The Moru­ga/Table­land MP said not on­ly was the gang threat­en­ing his life but was al­so dis­rupt­ing ef­forts to build new roads and bridges in the con­stituen­cy. The MP was res­olute that he was pre­pared to stand up against them.

Fran­cis said the gang was not on­ly “sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ex­tort­ing” con­trac­tors hired by the State to im­prove in­fra­struc­ture.

“Worse, there are those who be­lieve it is eas­i­er to turn a blind eye or make ac­com­mo­da­tions with this sort of thing. I res­olute­ly dis­agree. What starts off as a par­a­sitic in­fec­tion will soon over­whelm the host,” he stat­ed in his post.

Last Ju­ly, an­oth­er Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is ad­mit­ted she was “aghast” to hear that a con­trac­tor con­struct­ing the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in her con­stituen­cy of Mal­oney/D’Abadie had been forced to aban­don the project be­cause of in­tim­i­da­tion and de­mands for thou­sands of dol­lars in pro­tec­tion mon­ey.

In 2017, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan spoke out against gang mem­bers and rogue el­e­ments who had been ex­tort­ing mon­ey from con­trac­tors at sev­er­al State projects along the north-east­ern re­gion.

He said con­trac­tors who caved in­to the gang mem­bers’ de­mands had to pay a “cow­ard tax.”

Sinanan had told Guardian Me­dia that the threats by gang mem­bers had been hap­pen­ing at Fyz­abad, La Brea, Bel­mont, Diego Mar­tin and Laven­tille.

The reach of crim­i­nal gangs has al­so in­fil­trat­ed re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

A Guardian Me­dia re­port last week de­tailed how sev­en gang­sters were able to pock­et $6 m for work that was nev­er done. In re­sponse, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry has launched an au­dit in­to the claims and a re­port is ex­pect­ed by the end of Au­gust.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said on Sun­day that he had to in­ter­vene af­ter he learned that a gang leader had ob­tained a Cepep con­tract in his con­stituen­cy to end the arrange­ment.

Last Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter when asked di­rect­ly about re­ports of crim­i­nal gangs get­ting State con­tracts, he had this to say, “If there are gang lead­ers as such, or per­sons in gangs, we took a long time in Par­lia­ment…we took two shots at it to pass An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion…the pur­pose of which is to al­low the po­lice, up­on be­ing sat­is­fied that these sit­u­a­tions ex­ist and these per­sons are en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct of that na­ture, that the po­lice would charge them,” Row­ley said.

His po­si­tion con­tra­dicts the firm po­si­tion tak­en by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice who said last week, “It is ab­solute mad­ness that any­body that holds a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty could feel that by giv­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments funds and mon­ey…. [then] throw blame on the Po­lice Ser­vice. I will not have any­one throw blame…when they are not do­ing their job.”

In Fran­cis’ case, he said the gang was tar­get­ing con­trac­tors build­ing a bridge over the Moriq­uite Riv­er in Basse Terre.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Fran­cis said he had re­port­ed the threats to a po­lice sta­tion and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice.

“The po­lice al­so did a whole set of se­cu­ri­ty checks which I found help­ful but re­al­ly galling from a per­son who lives in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty. So all of this to me is re­al­ly frus­trat­ing es­pe­cial­ly when you are try­ing to bring progress to a com­mu­ni­ty that is left be­hind.”

Fran­cis said the is­sue of blam­ing the Gov­ern­ment and po­lice was ir­rel­e­vant.

“Law en­force­ment has to get very se­ri­ous in deal­ing with it and find maybe in­no­v­a­tive and dif­fer­ent ways in do­ing it. This per­cep­tion that Gov­ern­ment must some­how di­rect­ly do some­thing, then, when you put that you are ac­cused of over­reach­ing…you are ac­cused of in­fring­ing up­on the rule of law en­force­ment.”

He agreed that such gang ac­tiv­i­ty could lead to con­trac­tors not ac­cept­ing work in the com­mu­ni­ty or the price of projects could in­crease be­cause of high se­cu­ri­ty costs.

Fran­cis in­sist­ed that this was not a case of crim­i­nals ob­tain­ing Gov­ern­ment con­tracts in his con­stituen­cy, but a gang threat­en­ing le­git­i­mate con­trac­tors and then ex­tort­ing sums of mon­ey from them.

Asked if the po­lice were do­ing their job, Fran­cis said, “It’s a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed. It’s not a straight for­ward as just go­ing in and grab peo­ple. In this there must be some co­op­er­a­tion,” Fran­cis said.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh said the as­so­ci­a­tion had not re­ceived any re­ports of con­trac­tors be­ing threat­ened by gangs or were be­ing asked to pay ex­tor­tion fees to un­der­take State work.