Asha Javeed

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

As the prin­ci­pal own­ers of Blue Wa­ters re­main in prison fol­low­ing their de­ten­tion un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), state-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has stopped serv­ing the com­pa­ny’s bot­tled wa­ter on its flights.

Guardian Me­dia was told the air­line made the de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue us­ing Blue Wa­ters, which it has served on flights for over 15 years, last Wednes­day.

In­formed CAL sources said that the move was a sig­nif­i­cant one for the com­pa­ny be­cause it caused a bit of chaos for the staff, as Blue Wa­ters bot­tled wa­ter is served on all of the air­line’s flights.

“Crews had to re­move the la­bels of the wa­ter be­fore they served. And some crews had to pour wa­ter in­to cups for cus­tomers,” an in­formed source said fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion.

CAL is now serv­ing Dasani, al­so a lo­cal bot­tled wa­ter by Caribbean Bot­tlers Trinidad & To­ba­go Ltd, which is a sub­sidiary of the Co­ca-Co­la Com­pa­ny.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the de­ci­sion to switch wa­ter brands came from the board, which is chaired by Rey­na Kow­lessar. Nei­ther Kow­lessar nor oth­er com­pa­ny of­fi­cials could be reached for com­ment by Guardian Me­dia on what trig­gered the im­me­di­ate change by the com­pa­ny.

The snap de­ci­sion meant that, un­like oth­er pro­cure­ment con­tracts which are list­ed on CAL’s web­site, giv­en that it falls un­der the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions (OPR), no ten­der was ad­ver­tised or con­tract was is­sued on the com­pa­ny’s web­site as of yes­ter­day.

CAL pur­chas­es large quan­ti­ties of wa­ter from Blue Wa­ters and ac­cord­ing to pay­ment doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny can eas­i­ly spend close to half a mil­lion dol­lars a year on wa­ter. For in­stance, CAL spent $460,000 on wa­ter in 2024; it spent $264,000 on wa­ter from Blue Wa­ters on some in­voic­es seen.

Blue Wa­ters, which has been around for the last 27 years, was es­tab­lished by Do­minic Hadeed and is the dom­i­nant bot­tled wa­ter brand in T&T. It is ex­port­ed to sev­er­al is­lands across the Caribbean, in­clud­ing An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da and Guyana.

As of yes­ter­day, Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, the own­ers of the com­pa­ny, re­mained in prison with­out any charges be­ing laid. They are de­tained along with their rel­a­tive, Star Sab­ga, as law en­force­ment launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior mem­bers of her Cab­i­net.

On Fri­day, the cou­ple filed for ju­di­cial re­view and a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion on their de­ten­tion. Their lawyers claim their clients are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, based on their eth­nic­i­ty and an on­go­ing le­gal dis­pute over the ter­mi­na­tion of leas­es for State land.

Ac­cord­ing to le­gal doc­u­ments, the cou­ple al­so claimed that the move by the cur­rent Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency last month was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, as it sought to tar­get mem­bers of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group and Do­minic Hadeed per­son­al­ly.

They are of the view that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie was re­fer­ring di­rect­ly to Do­minic Hadeed dur­ing his Par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion on the ex­ten­sion of the SoE. They be­lieve that the al­le­ga­tions arose af­ter Do­minic pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in March and af­ter the Cab­i­net sought to uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nate leas­es to State land held by his Blue Wa­ters com­pa­ny in May.

“There is no and can be no ev­i­dence of any plot by the claimants to mur­der any per­son be­cause there was no such plot. There is no ba­sis for con­clud­ing that there was any ev­i­dence of any threat, re­al or per­ceived, against any pub­lic of­fi­cial,” their lawyers have claimed.

At­tor­neys for the Hadeeds al­so con­tend­ed that Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der ab­di­cat­ed the ex­er­cise of his dis­cre­tion in is­su­ing the PDOs, as he failed to take in­to ac­count rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the cou­ple’s stand­ing in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, their clean crim­i­nal records, the fact that they have three young chil­dren, the ef­fect on their rep­u­ta­tions and busi­ness­es and their med­ical con­di­tions.