Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: On the line with me this morning is Senior reporter for CNC3 Guardian Media, Kishan Haynes. Good morning to you sir.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Good morning. Good morning everyone.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: It's always good to hear from Kishan boy. Kijan is one of those senior reporters that is go there and, and follow in the footsteps of Akash and Akash falling Kijan and it's just chaos on me him when all they start to question people and ask questions man, don't ask me no questions. I plead the fifth one time.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: I do like to say Akash is the teacher and I am the student and we switch depending on what day.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: It is and what day it is. That's what I say. Don't ask me nothing. I plead in the fifth early.
But you know much talk happening about the wasa. Let's kick off with the WASA and any insight and knowledge. I mean with your reporting over the last few years. We start, I go in far back as the people's partnership when real people get walking Wasa.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And so one of the issues that the PNM had a problem was with that, that just as you said, real people here are walking wasa. So Marvin Gonzalez would have often said that one of the issues they had was that when they were cutting jobs more people came back in on contract afterwards.
So that's why they this whole restructuring came in.
Over the last couple of years they've been talking about this spas of being very top heavy and they're going to get rid of a lot of the managers.
So what ended up happening is that you ended up with a lot of middle managers probably saying going home.
And those jobs were consolidated then you have fewer people doing more work. They probably upped the salary which is what you heard Minister Perara spoken about yesterday, about few people getting these high salaries and all of that. But now what Polaris is saying is that they are scrapping that. Now what would be interesting to find out is because she was very, very vague when we asked many of these questions.
Are they going home? Are they all going home? Are they being, are they having their salaries cut? What does that mean? He kept saying well we're going to through HR and see what HR is saying. So it's we're gonna have to keep an eye on Wasa for the foreseeable Future. So far, Mr. Halliday who comes from Barbados, it looks like his job is safe but there's no real time and there were no clear Answers yesterday the only clear one that we got after a lot of was that the lower level staff remain on the job.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Well, the lower level staff needs to be on the job. These are the ones that execute. You know when you, when you, when you starve your your company and you send them your workforce, you retrench them and you do whatever and you keep management and certain topic top what them and going and climb the Lampos or as it would dig the holes.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: They're not doing that. So I could never understand a company getting rid of of of of the ground workforce and claiming wage wages.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Keeping in mind Minister Gonzalez was always very adamant he was not sending home that level of staff to when these whole things when the whole restructuring started.
I don't think there was a day Marvin Gonzalez was not asked if there were going to be layoffs at Washington.
Every single day. Every time we saw him he said they're restructuring. Does that mean people are going oh restructuring. Is that people going home? And for a lot of the time, most of the time he said no. And from what we have seen nobody has on the lower level at least has has gone home. If there were cuts because we're on the management level again, what happens now? Are those middle managers getting back their job? Are we going going back to that top heavy or are they are they going to cut the top level staff even more so then you have even fewer people at the top but at the same time you have to compensate them. So maybe you might see a little raise in salaries for those people who remain.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: All right, with that being said we move further afield property tax. We would have seen government make drastic moves to move property tax. We had David, it's Dave Tanku, our Minister of finance putting his foot in his mouth before time so saying people might have to get refund. Now he did say might. He didn't say it was a definite. He never said you're going to he said based on what you're hearing based on how things look in it looks like people may have to get refunds. That's what he said me might me that was he was talking those two. That word solidifies and signifies to me that it's not sure.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Well say not only on day one as you remember he said this on the gave you a sworn in and this is one of the growing pains new government all new governments have once those cameras come in front of you and you want to show off, you want to see something and then you end up having to walk it back into words a little bit. That is something that look forward to that over the next couple of months every time. So now we're in the phase of ministers walking through ministries and meeting their staff and meeting the line. Ministries, industries under them, the 30 businesses under them.
But what we're going to start having to is that now that they're going to say something and then we're going to talk about it for a week and then Kamala is going to come and say, sorry, the prime Minister is going to come and say, well, that's not what I said or that's not what I promised or some stuff like that. So this. But she did, she did say coming.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Forward, she did say. She did say that she promised and she didn't lie. She didn't promise that.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah, she said. Taku is the only person who said that. It's interesting though that I'm looking at a lot of people in the comment section saying, well, she said not to pay. She said not to pay. But when I joked and I said but I pay, I wanted my money back, she said, don't worry, my husband paid too. Yeah, interesting is that she paid her property taxes.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: So when she was telling ole don't pay, she followed the law. You know the law, state of pay. And that's what I said this morning. She was following the letter of the law. She's a lawyer after all, a senior counsel. So she followed the letter of the law. So my husband pay.
And I imagine the property, the palatial property, she's on notice the word palatial.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a big, it's a big building.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: It's huge and like we put it, building structure.
I could imagine the property tagged them would have had to fork out to pay. And she ain't getting it back and she don't want it back. At the end of the day, hey, it's done. And I agree with her. You don't need to pay back nothing. What's paid is paid. It's done. All right. Move on from it.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think. I don't know. Realistically.
Realistically, nobody expects to get back.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: You're looking at somewhere over a hundred million dollars according to the last administration in revenue gathered from the property tax. The last time or the first time to talk about it was 91 million. And by the time they made office, it was well over $100 million. They, the government of the, of the previous administration would have gathered generated from the property tax. How you gain 100 plus to almost 200 million to pay back people give people back.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Exactly. And that is. And that is exactly. But realistically. But I think one of the things is people are kind of resigning themselves to pay.
It's a revenue. I mean as you said it's a revenue owner. We still not 100% clear what is being replaced with.
And we need.
Because there is, there are. When. When the people's partnership was empowered the property tax was never repealed. That was their promise, but it was never repealed. They just stopped collecting for five years.
The PNM in their first term also didn't collect for five years. But what you now have is they now at the end of their second tomb we're starting to collect. So now what the question is what are they going to do now? Because the property tax is something that we've always paid. They were just called land and building tax. So when they repeal that, whenever they bring that legislation to repeal which they say is one of the first things on the agenda, what will be important to find out is what stays. Because I don't believe you can have a nation where you're building these exorbitant, these extravagant properties and you're not paying a little tax for the creation of a deal. Whether it's businesses or presidential.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: And as you think I remember speaking to my sister a few weeks back and she was like boy my property tax. And it mind you this my sister lives in the eastern main road prime property businesses. I always tell her why you don't sell the house and and you know some business it's prime. But you're talking about how many years ago under PNM Patrick Manning you paying $26. Whoever you expect I say so let me ask you something. Your property was valued many many years ago at three point something million. Today is about almost nine.
Then it should have stay tren.
It should have never increased. So you can't expect to pay property tax many moons ago at one figure and expect it to to be remaining the same and it going up under the past administration and your vex it's like what all our money but used to pay that before. Okay, you want a raise a pay though everything going up. So why property tax now Kishan, before you go. Well not before you go. Before we move on to the next topic. Do you think property tax was a bad thing?
[00:09:38] Speaker A: I. No. I mean nobody wants to pay tax. Who wants to pay taxes. But you know there, there are, there are things that you have to to do to keep the lights on. At the end of the day we have to do our part to keep the lights on. There are European countries that we go in and we look around and we're like, oh, my God, this is so amazing. And a lot of that is paid in taxes. A lot of these first world nations pay taxes out of their nose. However, the return on the investment is really good too. So that's what we trying to establish here. You pay a tax, but you have to get something out of it. If we believe the plan out of the former administration, they were saying that everything in your area, your taxes will go to development of your area, which would be like an incentive for you to pay your tax. Because there's an available on my. On my street. I know I pay my tax and that should go there. So that's not going to central government. That's going to the regional corporation in my area, to that portal on my.
If it worked.
If it worked exactly as proposed, it was not a bad idea.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: All right, cool. I often say, you know, we need to generate it. Let's talk. On the issue of the commission of the police. You would have covered those stories as well.
Not history, but we would have seen history repeat itself more or less. With the arresting and detention of our, well, sitting commissioner at the time, in January of this year, in questioning about the SSC and its allegiance, with the signing off of these sniper rifles, we would come to see eventually, about three months down the road, four months down the road, that there was not sufficient evidence. We have a deputy commissioner of police and head of the intelligence and investigative agencies within the police service saying that every step of the way, she and her investigative team colluded.
Nobody will say conspired, but spoke with. I'm gonna use. Yeah, that's the word. Layers. With the DPP on his. On matters.
And nowhere. I mean, if the DPP is now saying they don't have a case, he couldn't say that all the time.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Well, no, basically that's what he was saying. The fact that he never said charge.
That is what he was saying he was in.
So in other words, they would come to him first and say, we have this information and this is what we have.
And he says, I'm just. I'm not saying this is how it went down. I'm just saying. But, you know, that's how it usually goes. You say, all right, go, give me that. But then if they come and they say, this is the evidence we have, you may look at it and say, no, no, this is not enough. This is not enough evidence. You do not have a reasonable case here that you could win in court, go back, get more evidence and sometimes it goes back like that for weeks.
And in this case, well, you see, you see months.
So it so happened that maybe they, they had a compelling argument in the beginning but never after that were they able to bring enough evidence to show that she had done something wrong. For the TPP then to say okay, you have enough evidence to judge the police commissioner.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: And as if that's the dazzling. The police commissioner would have gone through such a debacle there in terms of being embarrassed. I mean you had to arrest me and detain me, my subordinates who I trusted, who were close allies with me, who I think, you know, I don't even think the commissioner knew that an investigation was on the way for her.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think so either. And I am, I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I am not 100% convinced.
This was not feel like a lot better with some, some sort of mini uprising.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: I mean one, one can allude, we can speculate.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I mean and they will deny, deny it but I there, there are really a lot of questions and without going into their minds we can't prove it. So what no evidence. We have no. This was just an investigation that was handled poorly and well, you saw how it ended up the thing looking forward now and all of these things cost the state money at a time when we don't have money to just be giving away like that.
How much is a leave? We have not heard from the AG exactly how much that.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Well, in all fairness Kishan, I think they would have to calculate that. I mean I was wishing they would.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Calculate it before they came to the media. And are we going to calculate it and then if we calculate it wrong they will say that we not paying attention as journalists and all kinds of things. I was hoping that if you come to cabinet with a plan to buy out a lease and then you come to post cabinet or announce it that you have the figure in front of you.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Well, again, I don't know. I don't know. I often wonder, you know when you look at these briefs and the amount of reading even I as the morning talk show I have a lot of reading to catch up on and to be doing on a daily basis. Most times I'm reading, reading, reading, reading. So I think the AG I am not going to put it on him. I mean I understand the prudency in terms of getting the information and coming before the press conference with it ready knowing that these, these journalists will be salivating question looking for answers.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: That was a basic question.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: That is the front runner question coming.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: You know, I didn't ask you for Article 2, clause B.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: If you say your mind is how.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Much you're willing, how much you're willing to be.
Was she informed of this? You know, these are the questions. I mean this was the top story. So you would, you would imagine, one would think that he would come there knowing these fellas elevating and they're ready, you know but at the end of the day we didn't get it and I would imagine in coming weeks we'll get it as we go ahead.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: No, I didn't say anything.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Say again?
[00:15:42] Speaker A: I didn't say anything.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Oh, you know, just going back to the DPP and well, even to the acting Police Commissioner, Junior Benjamin who seemed very much unfazed by what was going on. I mean when you all spoke with him getting information based on the newsroom, what is the general consensus coming from the office of the Commissioner, the acting Commissioner of Police at this time?
[00:16:06] Speaker A: He's ready to get down to work. We had an interview with him on I want to say Wednesday afternoon.
Wednesday there was this whole will she, won't she? And that's when we got the notice from the Ministry of National sorry now called Ministry of Homeland Security that she was going on 66 days leave on the last day of her contract and, and you know, but he was. Junior Benjamin is ready to work. He wants the, his name is in the ring and he's probably what we're hearing is he's stopping the merit list of the Police Service Commission for the next commissioner. He's willing to work and he wants to work and he's continuing on the job.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Indeed so. And I can see that he and all looks like he is vying for that position to be confirmed. I don't know in the order of the merit list how it's going to fare with him. I don't know. I've seen other acting commissioners of police didn't get a job and you know, it often boggles my mind. Kishan, and maybe you can shed some light on this.
These persons that act in these positions, these luminaries that shine a light in the offices of the Commissioner of Police.
What generally is the reason why they wouldn't be a part of the merit list if they were considered in the first place to sit in the intended position?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I'm not sure. But sometimes in some cases it's just a matter of seniority.
I know, in the Prisons Commission, the prisons commissioner is always the most senior officer. So you rarely, if ever, find a junior person who may be really good and really bright being elevated to prisons commissioner. Prisons commissioner is always these guys who close to retirement.
It's not necessarily like that in police service, but the problem with the police service is the way we choose a police commissioner. We keep changing it. We keep moving the goalposts. We still haven't figured out a good way, a clear way to choose the police commissioner. And that's where we end up with these debacles time and time again.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Kishan, I want to say thank you for chatting with me. Always a pleasure to chat with my colleagues upstairs and get some more insight. No doubt Melissa made the right decision in us chatting this morning and we would continue to have these discussions as, you know, stories unfold right here in Trinidad and Tobago and by extension, the region. So thank you again and have yourself a great day in the newsroom. All right, buddy.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Take care. The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
