Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Chief Sec­re­tary in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad�Bisses­sar's vis­it to To­ba­go to­day to dis­trib­ute lap­tops is "in­sen­si­tive and in­sult­ing" to the THA. Lon­don, who spoke at a press con­fer­ence last Thurs­day, said the lap­tops were a "new re­source" and the THA want­ed to im­ple­ment a com­mit­tee to en­sure "smooth tran­si­tion" when the lap­tops ar­rived. "At the last press con­fer­ence, I in­di­cat­ed my con­cern that there was no def­i­nite date when we in To­ba­go could know that the lap­tops will ar­rive for the var­i­ous schools," Lon­don said.

"I didn't do this out of spite or any­thing like that...I did it be­cause I made the point that if we knew when the lap­tops were com­ing we would be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to plan."

Say­ing he want­ed a "process of col­lab­o­ra­tion," Lon­don added: "We want­ed to put our­selves in a po­si­tion where the chil­dren can utilise the lap­tops or we can help to nur­ture the en­vi­ron­ment in which the util­i­sa­tion of the lap­tops can be max­imised." He said he re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion from the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry re­gard­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of lap­tops to To­ba­go but got no re­sponse.

Lon­don said no one from the THA at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el nor the tech­ni­cal lev­el was in­formed about to­day's dis­tri­b­u­tion. "What is the sig­nal you send to us in To­ba­go and the THA about the re­spect of the in­sti­tu­tion and the re­spect for the process that must be re­spect­ed and the re­la­tion­ship that must be fol­lowed be­tween the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and any min­istry in the coun­try?" he said.

"What is hap­pen­ing here is that you are telling us that lis­ten, you do not have to speak to us even in mat­ters over which we have con­trol." Say­ing he did not want to "come be­tween the chil­dren and their lap­tops," Lon­don, how­ev­er, said he would not al­low the THA to be "abused." "This is a time of cel­e­bra­tion...This a time for the young peo­ple to savour the mo­ment and I do not be­lieve that it is rea­son­able for any­body for what­ev­er mo­tive to al­so use this as a time to in­sult the THA," he said.