Roberts pushes back against PM’s ‘ghost project’ claim

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Deputy May­or Jo­van Roberts says no Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-led re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion is un­der probe for al­leged cor­rup­tion - but there have been is­sues in two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) cor­po­ra­tions.

Roberts al­so says sev­er­al PNM cor­po­ra­tions ob­tained cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship for their In­de­pen­dence 2025 events, and no tax­pay­ers’ funds were used for that.

Roberts made these com­ments in a state­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent re­ply to PNM cor­po­ra­tions’ call for more fund­ing, as the short­age is af­fect­ing ser­vices to burgess­es.

The Prime Min­is­ter, who said fund­ing was ad­e­quate, warned that PNM cor­po­ra­tions were “not go­ing to get a cent more” than the al­most $1 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for fis­cal 2026.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said they should in­stead start spend­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on ser­vices to cit­i­zens and not on “fete­ing, rum, win­ing on the road and pay­ing for ghost projects.”

How­ev­er, Roberts ac­cused the PM of “un­for­tu­nate­ly try­ing to mis­in­form or mis­lead by sug­gest­ing these things are PNM is­sues.”

He added, “On her ‘ghost projects’ claim, I checked all cor­po­ra­tions and the on­ly one un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the po­lice ser­vice’s An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) is the Ma­yaro-Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, which is a UNC-run cor­po­ra­tion.”

Roberts cit­ed the Ju­ly 2020 is­sue where Ma­yaro-Rio Claro cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees sub­mit­ted a 35-page doc­u­ment to the ACIB al­leg­ing cor­rup­tion by cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials and con­trac­tors.

Al­le­ga­tions in­clud­ed sign­ing off on in­com­plete in­fra­struc­tur­al projects and the mis­use of funds.

“If the Prime Min­is­ter wants to sug­gest that these types of ac­tiv­i­ties or al­leged cor­rup­tion prac­tices are tak­ing place in cor­po­ra­tions, she need not look fur­ther than in her own cor­po­ra­tions. No PNM cor­po­ra­tion is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for such ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Roberts added, “On the claim of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey ‘be­ing spent fete­ing, rum and win­ing on the road,’ the Prime Min­is­ter knows that Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions can­not be spent for these pur­pos­es. It is not pos­si­ble. Any time a cor­po­ra­tion has an ac­tiv­i­ty, it has to be done through ei­ther char­i­ty or cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship.”

Com­ment­ing on Roberts’ view yes­ter­day, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment/Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen said it is “to­tal rub­bish.”