Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar needs to tell the coun­try whether her Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts is cor­rect in say­ing that Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan was re­moved as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs be­cause she al­lowed the in­vest­ment pos­si­bil­i­ty with Ghana to slip away from this coun­try to Chi­na and be­cause as En­er­gy Min­is­ter she was un­re­spon­sive to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a US$1 bil­lion for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment deal land­ing on our shores.It is vi­tal that the Prime Min­is­ter sets the record straight be­cause in an­nounc­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind this par­tic­u­lar change in her Cab­i­net, the Prime Min­is­ter said she want­ed this bright and ef­fi­cient min­is­ter to take charge of the trans­for­ma­tion need­ed in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, as it is that cru­cial min­istry which serves the en­tire Gov­ern­ment.

Not on­ly is the Prime Min­is­ter's ex­pla­na­tion for mov­ing Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan at odds with those prof­fered by Min­is­ter Roberts, but his view seems to con­tra­dict the Prime Min­is­ter's that Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan is a bright and ef­fi­cient min­is­ter who has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to bring the trans­for­ma­tion re­quired to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. In one in­stance, Min­is­ter Roberts' al­le­ga­tions por­tray this coun­try as un­re­spon­sive to the prospect of re­ceiv­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment from a com­pa­ny "on the US stock ex­change."

In the case of the sec­ond al­le­ga­tion, T&T is por­trayed as a coun­try un­able to ef­fec­tive­ly com­pete, even when it has a com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage, to ad­vance its case as an in­vestor in Ghana, which is like­ly to be­come a ma­jor play­er in the nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try in Africa.With re­gard to miss­ing out on the part­ner­ship with Ghana, a bit of back­ground needs to be un­der­stood as to how T&T came to be seek­ing to in­vest in a ma­rine pipeline to bring gas ashore in Ghana.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in­vest­ed state re­sources to vis­it Africa and to meet with lead­ers of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of African States and specif­i­cal­ly with the lead­er­ship in Ghana to of­fer this coun­try's as­sis­tance with the de­vel­op­ment of their nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try.As a re­sult, Ghana an­nounced it was hap­py to en­gage with T&T be­cause this coun­try has a his­to­ry sim­i­lar to it with the coun­tries hav­ing his­tor­i­cal links; there­fore the com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage men­tioned above.An­oth­er very wor­ry­ing el­e­ment of Min­is­ter Roberts' al­le­ga­tions against Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan is the ac­cu­sa­tion that she had ex­pert ad­vis­ers such as An­drew Jupiter and Frank Look Kin.

The two are long-serv­ing pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees who are amongst the most knowl­edge­able in the en­er­gy in­dus­try in this coun­try. They are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ex­per­tise that has been de­vel­oped in the pub­lic sec­tor over the decades. Dis­miss­ing them as "PNM ad­vis­ers" is quite scathing of all the pub­lic ser­vants and pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees who have served the coun­try un­der all gov­ern­ments, in­clud­ing the UNC and NAR ad­min­is­tra­tions.

This at­tack on pub­lic ser­vants was at­tempt­ed by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments to the detri­ment of the coun­try. We should not walk down that road again. The pub­lic ser­vice specif­i­cal­ly, and the pub­lic sec­tor more gen­er­al­ly, serve to op­er­a­tionalise the poli­cies of the Gov­ern­ment of the day, whichev­er the par­ty that forms the Gov­ern­ment. Sure­ly Min­is­ter Roberts by his own de­f­i­n­i­tion would have "PNM ad­vis­ers" in his min­istry and, in­deed, giv­en the fact that he was em­ployed as sports co-or­di­na­tor in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs un­der for­mer Min­is­ter Roger Boynes might him­self be de­scribed as a "PNM pub­lic ser­vant."

Over the decades, out of the pub­lic ser­vice have come many of the most dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sion­als in a va­ri­ety of dis­ci­plines. Min­is­ter Roberts must not be al­lowed free reign to cas­ti­gate these ded­i­cat­ed men and women of our coun­try. Both the pro­posed in­vest­ment by the com­pa­ny list­ed on the US stock ex­change and the un­suc­cess­ful Ghana bid re­quire much more pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion-if on­ly be­cause there are po­ten­tial lessons which might be learnt from these "fail­ures."It would seem that the Prime Min­is­ter has an oblig­a­tion to ad­dress these is­sues at some time in the fu­ture-per­haps when the po­lit­i­cal tem­per­a­ture is a lit­tle less fraught than it is now.