More in­for­ma­tion is need­ed from the Prime Min­is­ter con­cern­ing the is­sues sur­round­ing the dis­con­tin­u­ance of the PURE pro­gramme. As read­ers should know, the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) was es­tab­lished to do ex­act­ly what its name sug­gests. PURE has en­gaged some 400 con­trac­tors who have been car­ry­ing out the road works in the re­cent past. Dur­ing that time, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the pro­gramme, has praised the work of the con­trac­tors. But this week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stepped in and re­scind­ed a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion for the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions of PURE. What is more, she ad­vised that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an is ex­am­in­ing the op­er­a­tions of this Min­istry of Works pro­gramme.

But, in all of this, the Works Min­is­ter told re­porters that he did not know any­thing about what is go­ing on with PURE. "I on­ly have to sit and wait to see what de­vel­ops from PURE," said an un­usu­al­ly vague Mr Warn­er. "But I can tell you that I am aware that there are some con­sid­er­a­tions be­ing giv­en at this point and as soon as they come to the fore, I will let you know," said the min­is­ter, sug­gest­ing that all is not right and most of all that he has been kept in the dark about the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Since the FI­FA al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion cir­cled around Min­is­ter Warn­er and af­ter her ini­tial re­fusal to coun­te­nance calls to sus­pend her min­is­ter un­til af­ter the FI­FA in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­clud­ed, the Prime Min­is­ter has tak­en away the Trans­porta­tion el­e­ment of Mr Warn­er's port­fo­lio and in so do­ing gave tac­it sup­port to CAL's chair­man, George Nicholas, in the sev­er­al bat­tles he had with the min­is­ter. The Prime Min­is­ter al­so placed a num­ber of her min­is­ters to watch over the Min­istry of Works in the con­struc­tion of the ex­ten­sion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way to Point Fortin. In each of the episodes, the Prime Min­is­ter, as could be ex­pect­ed, gave plau­si­ble if not sat­is­fy­ing ex­pla­na­tions and de­nied that her ac­tions were a com­ment on her prized min­is­ter; per­haps that po­si­tion end­ed af­ter the elec­tions cam­paign.

Yes­ter­day, the lo­cal arm of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al made point­ed ref­er­ence to the fact that Mr Warn­er con­tin­ues in the Cab­i­net notwith­stand­ing many mat­ters which have been raised about him. While Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not pub­licly raised ques­tions about the func­tion­ing of her Works Min­is­ter, her ac­tions of can­celling the PURE pro­gramme, her do­ing so with­out giv­ing in­for­ma­tion to her min­is­ter and re­quir­ing an­oth­er min­is­ter to in­ves­ti­gate must sure­ly be viewed as un­ortho­dox, to say the least. It might be con­strued as yet an­oth­er slap in the face for Min­is­ter Warn­er. Now all of this comes in the con­text of an in­creased num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing here be­ing of the view that cor­rup­tion in pub­lic life is in­creas­ing, and this is on­ly 18 months af­ter an elec­tion cam­paign by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship which tout­ed in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life.

The trans­paren­cy in­di­ca­tor places T&T in 91st place, an in­di­ca­tion that the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion has in­creased from 2010 when T&T was placed 73rd. "The 2011 CPI re­sults sug­gest that there is a wide­ly held per­cep­tion that the is­sue of cor­rup­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go has not as yet been com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dressed by the au­thor­i­ties," states the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute. Events such as those that have tran­spired in the PURE pro­gramme feed the per­cep­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter and her col­leagues are per­ceived to be build­ing up quite a stock of ques­tions to an­swer truth­ful­ly to the pop­u­la­tion. Very promi­nent on the list is for the Gov­ern­ment to say why it has not dealt with rec­om­men­da­tions of the Uff re­port and why it has not passed leg­is­la­tion on the pro­cure­ment by gov­ern­ment of goods and ser­vices.