TOBAGO People’s Party (TPP) Tobago West candidate Joel 'Nuttsy' Sampson has labelled Minister of Sport and Community Development Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis a non-performer.
Sampson said, as a THA assemblyman, he has done more for Tobago than she has done in her ten years in government.
“I have been an assemblyman for three years and in that time I have done more than you have done in a decade. The facts are there. Don’t be fooled,” he said at a TPP political meeting in Les Coteaux on April 24.
He was responding to Cudjoe-Lewis' criticisms over his no-show to the Tobago CivilNet's Conversations with Candidates at Bishop's High School, Scarborough, on April 23. He was the only candidate that did not participate.
Sampson said, “Your focus is off and it has been off for the past ten years, and on the 28th of April I am going to relieve you of your duties.
“You have not helped, you have not delivered and the people of Tobago... We have done your appraisal – you have failed. So please, I beg you, according to (reggae singer) Richie Spice, ‘Take Yuh Mind Off Of Me.’”
A fiery Sampson, Secretary in the Division of Community Development, Youth Development and Sport, slammed Cudjoe-Lewis for saying on the campaign that she felt sorry for him “because they give me speeches to read.
“But don’t feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for the 60,000 strong who suffered under you and your PNM colleagues. I wasn’t even going to dignify that with a response but since you brought it up, when you should be feeling sorry for the people of Tobago, you were smiling and posing for cameras.”
He continued, “Sorry, feel sorry for the tourism sector that’s crumbling while flights to Tobago stay unreliable. Feel sorry for the services that have moved to Trinidad, leaving us here without what we need. Feel sorry for the small businesses across this island, not waiting on deals but waiting on support, waiting on infrastructure, waiting on leadership that never came.
“How dare you try to compare my one year of real work in a division with delivery to your ten years sitting in the Parliament and doing the bare minimum?”
Sampson said he did not have ten years to get comfortable.
“I had to get to work immediately as an assemblyman. I still roll up my sleeves and get involved, just like when I worked at the Water and Sewerage Authority. I stay hands-on, helping when I can, doing what needs to get done.”
He claimed Cudjoe-Lewis, who is seeking a third consecutive term as the PNM’s Tobago West candidate in the April 28 general election, was ineffective and unsympathetic as a representative when residents of Canaan/Bon Accord/Crown Point were displaced to accommodate the expansion of the ANR Robinson International Airport.
“Where was the MP for Tobago West when her government abused residents in Crown Point, chasing them off their property and cheating them off their land value? She was busy taking them to court while I was fighting for them.
“Brothers and sisters, my voice was heard when it mattered most to the people of Tobago. This THA stepped in and paid their rent and gave them property for $15 a square ft with TT $100 as down payment. Where was the minister and her caring government?"
Sampson told supporters Cudjoe-Lewis had spoken more in the past three weeks of the campaign than she did in nearly a decade in the Parliament.
“The MP for Tobago West keeps missing the point, always focused on the wrong thing. While I was talking about the issues, she studying speeches.
“She could lie on cue and without a script. Is talk she like to talk. You had years to speak for Tobago, years to act and you said nothing. Now you want to study me. Talk to the people you have failed. Beg them for forgiveness, for abusing them.”
