Duke endorses DSS, tells Government to return $7m

PUBLIC Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke has not only endorsed the Drugs Sou-Sou (DSS) scheme administered by Kerron Clarke, but is also giving Government an ultimatum: release over $7 million seized from the DSS by police…or else.

Duke, in a video recording posted to his Facebook account on Tuesday, said he made a call to Clarke as PSA president, to try and alleviate the financial burden felt by PSA members who are unable to pay their bills, “Monthly, fortnightly and even weekly.”

At a meeting with Clarke, Duke said a check of records showed at least 200 PSA members had invested in the DSS scheme, but he is sure the true tally of PSA investors is in the thousands.

On  October 27, police raided Clarke's La Horquetta home, where he administers the DSS scheme, and seized over $7 million. This followed a similar raid on September 22, again at Clarke's La Horquetta base, where $22 million was seized, only to be returned hours later under the cover of darkness, unknown to investigators or Police Commissioner Gary Griffith.

An internal investigation then saw four policemen being suspended and 11 other police officers being transferred.

The Prime Minister has described the DSS as a cancer which, left unchecked, "can eat away at the soul of the nation."

However, in the video recording posted to Duke's Facebook page on Tuesday, he said that Clarke has  new friends and that the PSA endorses the DSS scheme and is calling on the government to release the $7 million still in the hands of the police.

Duke said in the video recording, "I want to let you know I am standing with Mr Clarke on this ground and so long as poor people money involved in that, as long as workers’ money (is) involved in that, I am in that struggle!

"I will mobilise the parish to get back the money and I am telling the PNM and them something: Allyuh stop abusing black people. We spent years in slavery, we never asked to come here. We got no reparations and now that we are trying to make a living out here by becoming what we dreamt to become, and you take it away from us?

"I want you to know Mr Clarke is making new friends, I understand what is going on and the PSA will stand in defence of workers' money and Tobagonians' money and I want to put that on the record here."