Kali­fa Clyne

The ques­tion of the rel­e­vance of the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ty Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (SASC), first raised at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing ear­li­er this year, is now be­ing looked at by the com­mis­sion's board in an at­tempt to make the com­mis­sion more ef­fec­tive.This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by the com­mis­sion's chair­man, Steve Al­varez, af­ter a tour and meet­ing with of­fi­cials at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo.The vis­it to the zoo was the third such ex­er­cise aimed at bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and re­spond­ing to the needs of statu­to­ry bod­ies un­der the com­mis­sion's au­thor­i­ty.The SASC is re­spon­si­ble for 13 such statu­to­ry bod­ies in T&T.The meet­ings were al­so aimed at gath­er­ing in­put nec­es­sary to the com­mis­sion's strate­gic plan for the next four years.Al­varez told re­porters much of what he had heard in the three meet­ings so far had to deal with va­can­cies, clas­si­fi­ca­tion of work­ers and the min­imis­ing of tem­po­rary po­si­tions.Pres­i­dent of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety, Nar­ine Lutch­me­di­al, said he felt sat­is­fied that a lot of is­sues raised with the SASC would be ad­dressed.