Cummings wants Grace to say if she got 2 salaries while on contract

Chairman of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), Daniel Cummings, has raised even more questions about the EC$144,000, one-year contract awarded to Hospital Administrator and Unity Labour Party (ULP) candidate for North Windward, Grace Walters.

Specifically, he said that Walters must say if she was still the hospital administration in August and whether the contract was backdated to January 2025 to run through January 2026.

Speaking at the NDP’s campaign event in Owia on Tuesday, Cummings pointed out that as the hospital administrator, Walters received a monthly salary of EC$8,000 per month.

“You have heard me say that this lady got herself a contract for $12,000 a month. But here it is, up until August this year, ask that lady if she was still receiving payment as the administrator of Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, while receiving $12,000 from January, for God knows what.”

Cummings said Walters should say whether she was paid EC$20,000 a month from the Treasury up to August. 

The opposition candidate is seeking election to a fourth consecutive term in office as MP for West Kingstown.

Walters, a first-time candidate, is hoping to retain North Windward in the ULP column, where it has been since 2001.

Cummings told NDP supporters in Owia that there are more questions for Walters to answer.

“How did she get the position of consultant to the hospital project? Was there an open tender? Did everybody else have an opportunity to apply? Did the Public Service Commission authorise her to be employed as a contract officer while still being in the employ of the government of this country?”

He noted that in her response, Walters had said that it is not unusual for the government to award contracts to public sector workers.

“Nice words to use. Nice word,” said Cummings, who was offered a contract to continue as manager of the Central Walter and Sewerage Authority after he retired from the post in March 2001.

“There is no example in this country of any government employee who obtained a contract with any government while they remain a member of the government service. Not a single one,” he said.

“Yet they want to tell you it’s common. What that says to you, St. Vincent the Grenadines, is that these people have been breaking the laws of the land for very many years. Ask them, how is it possible?”

Cummings also raised questions about what the contract actually requires Walters to do. 

“Imagine you call yourself a professional and get yourself awarded with a contract for $12,000 a month, and the terms are such that you don’t even have to produce a report,” he said.

“You have no deliverables whatsoever. All you do, they tell you a sit down and advise you could do that by running up and down the country campaigning to win the seat. That is advice.”

He said there was no provision in the contract for Walters “to produce a single document, to do any work.

“I have never seen in my life a contract of that kind.”

Cummings first made the contract public on Saturday at the NDP’s campaign rally in North Union.

What, in your eyes, has Grace Walters been doing for the last six months, other than campaigning up and down the length and breadth of this country?” he told party supporters.

“What does Grace Walters know about anything to do good with health care? What this wicked government has done? They have given this woman responsibility to advise on how the new health care system should be run,” Cummings said.

Walters responded the following day, suggesting at the ULP’s rally in Biabou that Cummings was raising questions about the contract because she is a woman and “a Carib”.

“It is not unusual for anyone who works with the government to be given a contract. It’s not uncommon. It’s not unheard of. It’s a regular thing. There’s a minister of finance,” Walters said and looked in the direction of Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves.

“I applied for and was granted no-pay leave, and if the lazy people on the NDP would do their investigation rather than take something that the colonial people give them to read, they would have gotten this information. They wouldn’t have embarrassed themselves so much.”

The ULP identified Walters as its candidate in May 2023 and formally selected her in February this year.

As a public sector worker, Walters has to take no-pay leave or resign from her job in order to contest the election.

Walters said she “applied for a leave without a salary in order to take up an offer that was given to me because I was qualified. I am qualified for that offer”.

It is not clear whether the post was advertised or if it was offered only to Walters.

In the aftermath of Cummings’ revelation, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who is also the leader of the ULP, called on him to talk about the contract he was awarded in 2001 to continue to manage the CWSA.

Cummings said in Owia that instead of apologising to the people of the country for Walters’ contract, the government “sought to pull down my character.

“I tell you this: one thing this country knows about me, I have no secret. I stand by every word I say and every single action I take, because I am guided by the principles that are of the highest standard of the land and nobody can cast them out of me,” he said.

“It’s not the first time that they attempted to find all kinds of reasons to pull me down. Don’t forget, it’s is this same big belly fella who begged me to come back to serve this country after I resigned because of the corruption under the ULP,” Cummings said.

“I resigned my job in water authority, and he begged me and persuaded all my family and friends to come back with the same contract he’s trying to criticise today.”