A secret list of those who received State grants totalling $46 million from the Ministry of Culture and Gender Affairs during the period 2003 to 2007 has finally been revealed.

Among those named on the list are a Government Senator who benefitted from financial assistance of $143,100 for studies pursued in London before taking office in 2006.

A total of 266 students received financial assistance from the ministry totalling $14.8 million in pursuit of their studies abroad in 2007 while 175 benefitted from similar assistance in 2006.

The disclosure came about through a request made in the High Court by attorneys at law Anand Ramlogan and Riad Ramsaran on behalf of the Indo-Trinidadian Equality Council (ITEC) under the Freedom of Information Act.

This was the same act that Culture Minister Marlene McDonald cited as the reason she could not reveal the names in Parliament on July, 1 2008, when asked to do so by Opposition Senator Adesh Nanan on behalf of the Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate Wade Mark.

McDonald, who was not the minister responsible for these grants during the four-year period involved, had told the Senate that she could not reveal the names on the list of grant recipients since it would amount to an unreasonable disclosure of personal information as defined by the Act.

In an interview with the Express yesterday, Ramlogan described the disbursements as scholarships even though McDonald had told the Senate on March 11, 2008, that they were ’really financial assistance and I have been informed that there is no binding contract between the student and the ministry’.

ITEC president Devant Maharaj provided the Express with a copy of the entire list and also a letter from the Ministry of the Attorney General Chief Solicitor’s Department dated November 9, 2009, concerning the legal request made by Maharaj on July 3, 2008, sent to Ramlogan’s San Fernando law firm, Freedom House Chambers, which stated that the grant list was sent to them and was ’subdivided into the categories of local, regional and foreign scholarship recipients’.

Ramlogan alleged they comprised a form of political and racial discrimination that should not be tolerated.

’These are political scholarships except that it was being awarded by the State. It was not being funded by a political party. ... It demonstrates the kind of political discrimination and exclusion of non-PNM supporters to access scholarship funds of this kind,’ he said.

Maharaj told the Express yesterday that it was the Government’s refusal to identify the names of the grant beneficiaries in the Parliament which raised suspicions as to how they were made aware of and had received the grants since McDonald had told the Parliament that during the 2003 to 2007 they had not been advertised but as of 2008 this was no longer the case.

’She used the Freedom of Information Act as a cover for the Government’s shenanigans so to speak. However, ironically the very same Freedom of Information Act was used by us to uncover, to shine a light on this very illusive information which the Government had refused to give publicly,’ Maharaj said.

He questioned the exact criteria used to determine who received the grants from the Culture and Gender Affairs Ministry.

McDonald had said in the Parliament last year that there was a set of list of criteria applied to ensure those who applied for the financial assistance were qualified to receive it.