Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed a vet­eri­nar­i­an who had no for­eign ser­vice back­ground to be T&T's con­sul gen­er­al for Mi­a­mi, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan yes­ter­day.

He sup­plied de­tails of the Con­sul Gen­er­al-Dr Anil Ram­nanan -in re­ply to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in the Low­er House yes­ter­day. But Ram­bachan re­mained mum on Op­po­si­tion queries whether Ram­nanan, pri­or to his ap­point­ment, had been on dis­ci­pli­nary charges at his for­mer job at the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry and if Ram­nanan had been im­port­ing dogs in­to T&T with­out the nec­es­sary per­mits.

Ram­bachan said Ram­nanan was a pub­lic of­fi­cer for 11 years pri­or to be­com­ing con­sul gen­er­al to Mi­a­mi in Feb­ru­ary. He said Ram­nanan had been a vet at the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry be­tween 2000 and 2010, as well as be­ing an as­sis­tant teacher and part-time UWI lec­tur­er. "He (Ram­nanan) was not a for­eign ser­vice of­fi­cer pri­or to his ap­point­ment as con­sul gen­er­al to Mi­a­mi," Ram­bachan con­ced­ed. Ram­bachan al­so ad­mit­ted: "Yes, the du­ties of con­sul gen­er­al, in prac­tice, have been per­formed by se­nior for­eign ser­vice of­fi­cers." He said the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment, by Cab­i­net agree­ment in April 2009, agreed to the em­ploy­ment of a con­sul gen­er­al to New York on a two-year con­tract.

Ram­bachan said Ram­nanan's ap­point­ment as con­sul gen­er­al on con­tract was ap­proved by Cab­i­net last No­vem­ber. Since Ram­nanan was not a for­eign ser­vice of­fi­cer, Ram­bachan said he on­ly would be re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­tra­tion, se­cu­ri­ty, im­mi­gra­tion, re­port­ing on po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments and oth­er du­ties at the con­sulate. Ram­bachan said for­eign ser­vice of­fi­cer, Garth Lam­see, was han­dling the du­ties of ac­count­ing of­fi­cer at the con­sulate, since the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer must be a for­eign ser­vice of­fi­cer. He did not re­ply to sup­ple­men­tal Op­po­si­tion queries whether Ram­nanan had been on no-pay leave from his pre­vi­ous Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry job, pri­or to his ap­poin­ment, and if he al­so had been on dis­ci­pli­nary charges.

Nor did Ram­bachan re­spond on whether he was aware of civ­il ser­vice reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing pub­lic of­fi­cers on no-pay leave be­ing grant­ed over­seas as­sign­ments, es­pe­cial­ly when there were dis­ci­pli­nary charges at­tached to the of­fi­cer. Ram­bachan said he would have to ob­tain the in­for­ma­tion. Mean­while, Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day de­clined to say ex­act­ly whether the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment had tak­en a po­si­tion against Gov­ern­ment's ini­tial nom­i­na­tion of An­tho­ny Moore to be T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Ja­maica.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan, re­ply­ing to Low­er House queries on the is­sue, said Moore, a pe­tro­le­um re­fin­ery work­er of 32 years ex­pe­ri­ence, had been nom­i­nat­ed to Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties for the post by Gov­ern­ment last No­vem­ber.

But Ram­bachan said, sub­se­quent to that, Moore said he was not in a po­si­tion to ac­cept the post due to "per­son­al rea­sons." Ram­bachan said Gov­ern­ment with­drew the nom­i­na­tion. Moore was made chair­man of the T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion. Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly nom­i­nat­ed Dr Iva Glouden for the post of high com­mis­sion­er in Feb­ru­ary. Ram­bachan de­clined to an­swer Op­po­si­tion queries on the cri­te­ria for the post and whether the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment took any po­si­tion about Moore's nom­i­na­tion, apart from his own de­ci­sion not to ac­cept the post.

Ram­bachan said he was not aware of any po­si­tion tak­en by the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment. PNM MPs, who seemed to know oth­er­wise, bawled in sur­prise: "Whaaat!" Ram­bachan said he was aware Gov­ern­ment with­drew Moore's nom­i­na­tion. He said the sit­u­a­tion nev­er reached to agree­ment stage since Moore with­drew due to "per­son­al rea­sons." Those were not stat­ed.