UNC Caroni East employee sent on leave pending TTPS probe

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An em­ploy­ee of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' Ca­roni East con­stituen­cy of­fice has been sent on im­me­di­ate ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) probe in­to al­le­ga­tions cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia.

This was an­nounced in a state­ment from Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecher­an yes­ter­day.

The state­ment con­firmed that Seecher­an had be­come aware of al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing one of the em­ploy­ees of the par­ty's Ca­roni East of­fice. Seecher­an, who is the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health, didn't im­me­di­ate­ly an­swer calls on the is­sue yes­ter­day.

But Guardian Me­dia checks found that the is­sue con­cerned a video where a com­plaint and an ur­gent ap­peal for help was made by a per­son re­gard­ing an al­leged sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing a Ca­roni East of­fice em­ploy­ee. UNC of­fi­cials yes­ter­day de­clined to say if the al­le­ga­tions made weere sex­u­al in na­ture..

The re­lease from Seecher­an stat­ed, "Up­on be­ing made aware of these al­le­ga­tions, im­me­di­ate ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tion was tak­en. The em­ploy­ee in ques­tion has been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

"The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni East and the Ca­roni East Of­fice take all al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct se­ri­ous­ly and re­main com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing the high­est stan­dards of in­tegri­ty, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Where such mat­ters arise, ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is tak­en to en­sure that they are ad­dressed thor­ough­ly, fair­ly and in ac­cor­dance with due process."

The state­ment added, "As the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment fur­ther at this time. We are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the process is con­duct­ed fair­ly. We ask for the pub­lic’s un­der­stand­ing and pa­tience as this process un­folds thor­ough­ly and with­out prej­u­dice to any par­ty in­volved. Fur­ther up­dates will be pro­vid­ed if and when ap­pro­pri­ate."