Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

In the face of damn­ing al­le­ga­tions ques­tion­ing the lead­er­ship of Dan­ny Solomon as chair­man of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA), a note is to be tak­en to Cab­i­net to­mor­row to re­in­state him.

And T&T Guardian has learned it is un­like­ly Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts will fol­low through on his threat to re­sign from the Cab­i­net over the de­ci­sion, as sources re­vealed he met with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sun­day be­fore she left to at­tend the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly The­mat­ic de­bate in New York, where the mat­ter was dis­cussed.Roberts had re­port­ed­ly threat­ened to re­sign if Solomon was reap­point­ed to head the new board.

Sources said Roberts' stance was based on in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to him by (CDA) board mem­bers who had raised is­sue over Solomon's lead­er­ship style. At a com­mit­tee meet­ing of the board in March at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to sack Solomon from the po­si­tion. How­ev­er, plans are now afoot to ig­nore that de­ci­sion and re­in­state him.A num­ber of con­tentious is­sues sur­round­ed Solomon's ap­point­ment as chair­man.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the for­mer board and Solomon had butted heads over de­ci­sion-mak­ing at the state en­ter­prise. Sev­er­al of the con­cerns were re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly in the Sun­day Guardian.This even­tu­al­ly led to line min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie last year tak­ing a note to Cab­i­net to dis­band the board be­cause of the con­tention be­tween mem­bers. Tewarie had al­so giv­en a di­rec­tive last Sep­tem­ber in­struct­ing all com­mit­tee and board meet­ings to be stopped.

Board mem­bers had crit­i­cised Tewarie's han­dling of con­cerns raised and sources said they opt­ed to al­so dis­cuss the mat­ter with Roberts, hop­ing the is­sues would be ad­dressed.Ef­forts to con­tact Solomon yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful, as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered and he did not re­turn voice mes­sages. Al­so con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Roberts de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter.