SADDAM HOSEIN, Barataria/San Juan MP, called on Sunday for the Integrity Commission to probe the applications of businessman Allan Warner for a firearm user's licence (FUL) and a quarry blasting permit. He was addressing a briefing at UNC headquarters in Chaguanas.
Hosein said Warner was a close friend and business partner of the Prime Minister and was recently charged under the Mines and Minerals Act for processing aggregate without a licence and is now on bail.
The MP said Dr Rowley had bought a townhouse in Warner's Inezgate development in Tobago and the two men each had an interest in Alma Farms in Tobago.
Companies linked to Warner had got construction contracts at the Prime Minister's official residence in Tobago and at the Tobago House of Assembly, Hosein said.
He said Rowley had denied ever trying to fast-track Warner's FUL application but has not denied a story on Saturday reported a series of purported WhatsApp messages between him and then police commissioner Gary Griffith discussing the status of Warner's FUL application.
Hosein said he would like to ask Rowley if he had asked for an FUL status report for anyone else or if it was only for Warner.
"When mothers are denied food cards and persons are denied disability grants – and persons are killed in this country – do you send WhatsApp messages to the families and express your sympathies and condolences?
"Do you ask the ministers to get involved to get a grieving or a single mother a food card or a grant to take care of her children? No.
"But what we are seeing here are messages between what purports to be yourself (Rowley) and a former commissioner of police with respect to an FUL application."
He asked how many other people's FUL applications were languishing at the COP's office, so they had to go to the Firearms Appeal Board and then the law courts.
Hosein read from several newspaper reports of applicants complaining or taking legal action against a tardy consideration of their requests.
Saying the award of an FUL was up to a police commissioner under the Firearms Act (section 17), Hosein said, "Why is the Prime Minister getting involved in this, if it is true?"
Citing alleged WhatsApp messages between Rowley and Griffith, in which the former promised to deliver an FUL to Warner once it had been issued by Griffith, Hosein asked, sarcastically, if Rowley had reduced the PM's position to the status of a caddy boy.
"Who really running this country? Is the PM a caddy boy of Mr Walker?"
"The Prime Minister's defence is a blasted waste of time," Hosein said before moving onto the topic of whether Warner had lacked a blasting permit.
With a media report showing purported WhatsApp messages between former minister of national security (and now energy minister) Stuart Young and Griffith discussing the status of Warner's application for a blasting permit, Hosein said a police commissioner was not under the control of the minister of national security.
He wondered how Young had known about Warner's blasting permit.
"The ministe
