Sto­ry by SHAS­TRI BOODAN & JESSE RAMDEO

Ch­agua­nas May­or, Van­dana Mo­hit, is ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of us­ing con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to can­vass for the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Mo­hit, who is al­so Ch­agua­nas East can­di­date for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the up­com­ing elec­tion, re­vealed that over the last sev­er­al days, her of­fice has re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls from res­i­dents of Oa­sis Gar­dens.

She said the res­i­dents iden­ti­fied the callers as per­sons con­nect­ed with the PNM who were in­struct­ing them to go to the of­fices of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) to reg­is­ter to vote in Ch­agua­nas East.

She has since la­belled the de­vel­op­ment as dis­turb­ing.

“These res­i­dents would nev­er have giv­en their con­tact in­for­ma­tion to the PNM or any sur­vey team,” she notes, “so it is very con­cern­ing that these per­sons who are con­tact­ing res­i­dents are stat­ing they would have got the list­ing—with their con­tact in­for­ma­tion—from the HDC.”

She added: “We are call­ing on the HDC to clar­i­fy these are al­le­ga­tions. We re­al­ly need to know what is hap­pen­ing. This is a con­flict of in­ter­est on the part of the HDC, giv­ing the in­for­ma­tion to the PNM.”

The Ch­agua­nas East UNC can­di­date said this is the on­ly area where such com­plaints are com­ing from, and that it ap­pears said the res­i­dents are be­ing pres­sured.

“We have heard there is a rush in the HDC be­cause of the kind of phone calls tak­ing place. In­for­ma­tion com­ing to us in­di­cates that per­sons who are in­volved in this reg­is­tra­tion process are charg­ing $50 per per­son to reg­is­ter. This is not right and should be cor­rect­ed.”

Mo­hit al­so slammed the gov­ern­ment for seek­ing to give the res­i­dents of En­ter­prise land deeds at the eleventh hour. She said some of the per­sons get­ting land doc­u­ments now were strug­gling to get a grant to fix their homes in the re­cent past, be­cause they did not have any land doc­u­ments.