Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Ma­yaro MP Nicholas Mor­ris is al­leg­ing that tax­pay­ers were asked to foot a $414,000 bill for a par­ty at for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's of­fi­cial To­ba­go res­i­dence on the same night his ad­min­is­tra­tion de­clared a State of Emer­gency in De­cem­ber 2024.

Mor­ris made the al­le­ga­tion dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2027 Bud­get de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, as he launched a blis­ter­ing re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.

Claim­ing to have doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence, Mor­ris told Par­lia­ment that a bill was sub­mit­ted to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter re­quest­ing that Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Ltd (UDe­COTT) cov­er ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with the De­cem­ber 31, 2024 event.

"They asked UDe­COTT, Mr Speak­er, to pay $414,000 for that par­ty," Mor­ris de­clared.

He said the ex­pens­es in­clud­ed cater­ing and bar ser­vices, print­ing ma­te­ri­als, trans­porta­tion, au­dio­vi­su­al equip­ment and ac­com­mo­da­tion.

Ques­tion­ing the ac­com­mo­da­tion ex­pens­es, Mor­ris asked why guests would re­quire paid ac­com­mo­da­tion for an event host­ed at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial res­i­dence.

"If you have a par­ty at the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence, what do you pay ac­com­mo­da­tion for? Who do you pay to stay over there?"

Mor­ris fur­ther al­leged that while the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion was an­nounc­ing emer­gency se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, cel­e­bra­tions were tak­ing place at the res­i­dence.

But the Ma­yaro MP's con­tri­bu­tion was not with­out po­lit­i­cal the­atre.

With the State-as­sist­ed fu­ner­al of ca­lyp­so icon the Mighty Spar­row al­so tak­ing place yes­ter­day, Mor­ris, who spoke im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Op­po­si­tion Leader's re­sponse to the bud­get, cheek­i­ly de­clared that he had un­ex­pect­ed­ly found him­self at­tend­ing two fu­ner­als.

"It was my in­ten­tion to­day, as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and a mem­ber of this Gov­ern­ment, to on­ly at­tend one fu­ner­al to­day, the fu­ner­al of the great Spar­row. But it is clear, Mr Speak­er, that I have at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al of the PNM," he said.

He then bor­rowed a line from Spar­row's mu­sic to ac­cuse the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of aban­don­ing the pop­u­la­tion.

"Af­ter promis­ing so much ten­der care, they for­get me as they walk out of Wood­ford Square," Mor­ris quot­ed, adding that this re­flect­ed the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM's) record over its decade in of­fice.

Turn­ing to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, Mor­ris claimed the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion made 11 with­drawals to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly $18 bil­lion or US$2.64 bil­lion, with­out mak­ing any de­posits.

He con­trast­ed this with what he de­scribed as growth in the fund from US$5.98 bil­lion in April 2025 to US$6.58 bil­lion un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Mor­ris al­so ac­cused the PNM of re­peat­ed­ly fail­ing to de­liv­er on its bud­get com­mit­ments.

He claimed that be­tween 2016 and 2025, the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion made 490 promis­es, of which 382 were bro­ken and 103 re­peat­ed.

He cit­ed pro­posed in­vest­ments in ship­build­ing, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and the yacht­ing in­dus­try among ini­tia­tives he said nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

The Ma­yaro MP al­so re­ject­ed Beck­les' crit­i­cism of mu­nic­i­pal fund­ing, in­sist­ing that PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions had re­ceived in­creas­es in re­cur­rent al­lo­ca­tions.

He main­tained that the Op­po­si­tion was mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion by high­light­ing re­duc­tions in de­vel­op­ment spend­ing with­out con­sid­er­ing the broad­er al­lo­ca­tions.