Moonilal: NLCB squandering millions

MIRANDA LA ROSE

The National Lotteries Control Board has been squandering millions of dollars as if they had never seen money before and at a time when government agencies were being asked to tighten their belts and cut expenses, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal claimed on Thursday.

The NLCB is owed $25 million and, he said, it would be interesting to see who and where the agents are.

During debate on the 2018 budget in the Lower House, Moonilal said while Government was complaining about not having money, “They are stripping this economy. It is like an obscene striptease act. Piece by piece they are destroying the economy.”

While Government has resorted to borrowing, Moonilal said NLCB spent lavishly on trips China, Italy, Japan, Las Vegas, and Magdalena in Tobago before the Minister of Finance stopped them.

In addition, he said, NLCB also spent lavishly on an awards ceremony and retreat at the Hyatt and cricket excursions. With copies of the bills in hand, he said NLCB spent almost $100,000 for vouchers from Massy for employees, 10 members of staff received $108,000 in awards, $40,000 was spent on Johnny Walker Black as gifts for board members, and $106,000 for decoration for an awards function, $60,000 for a sound system, and pens and pencils for the two day retreat was $18,000. The entire bill for the awards ceremony, he said, “was in excess of $800,000.”

A children’s party hosted by the NLCB was in excess of $250,000, and another package for friends and family of NLCB board members to attend Caribbean Premier League (CPL) T20 cricket matches, Moonilal said, was $687,000.

The taxi fare for a director from Tobago to attend a CPL match at the Brian Lara Cricket Stadium, he said, was $1,000. He said taxpayers were also paying over $10,000 for security for the NLCB chairman due to threats which he said he had not reported to the police.

On other issues, he said, the firing of acting chief executive officer and general manager of the Port Authority Charmaine Lewis after being a witness before a Joint Select Committee was “an assault on this Parliament” as she should have enjoyed parliamentary privileges.

Of interest in Lewis’s letter of dismissal, he said, was the forensic searches by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the fact that Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young would have told a post-Cabinet press conference that “the ministry” had begun to conduct a forensic audit involving computer equipment, laptop, phones among other evidence.

The Ministry of Works and Transport and the Ministry of the Attorney General are not Lewis’s employer, and the dismissal letter, Moonilal said, “suggests that PWC is acting as the FBI.” When the phones and computers go to PWC for the forensic analysis for which Government is paying, he said, “they have all the secret matters” of the Port Authority.