Gail Alexan­der

Sev­en trips un­der­tak­en by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her en­tourages in the last six months cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.6 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures giv­en by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan yes­ter­day. He out­lined the fig­ures in re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion PNM ques­tion in the Low­er House yes­ter­day. The in­for­ma­tion per­tained to trips made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her en­tourages over the pe­ri­od May 24 to No­vem­ber 11. This was apart from her vis­it to New York from Au­gust 13 to 22. Ram­bachan said the to­tal cost of the sev­en trips over the May-No­vem­ber pe­ri­od in ques­tion amount­ed to $494,735.29 for the PM.

Ram­bachan al­so said the to­tal cost for her en­tourages for the sev­en trips amount­ed to $1.2 mil­lion. In­di­vid­ual trav­el cost fig­ures giv­en by Ram­bachan in­clud­ed for the PM's trip where she met with Cari­com and oth­er of­fi­cials. Costs for this trip were $96,780 (PM) and $425,528 (en­tourage). Costs for an­oth­er trip to New York to at­tend UN meet­ings were $142,702 (PM), $217,627 (en­tourage).

A Lon­don trip cost $165,785 (PM) and $382,791.74 (en­tourage). A New York trip al­so cost $85,638 (PM) and $167,103 (en­tourage). An­oth­er trip was to St Lu­cia to vis­it that storm-hit is­land. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so went to Bar­ba­dos for the fu­ner­al of late Prime Min­is­ter David Thomp­son. She used a Coast Guard plane to trav­el there and "not a pri­vate jet" Ram­bachan said. He not­ed the 2009 cost of leas­ing a pri­vate plane which was done by for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Ram­bachan used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­it­er­ate Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ac­tiv­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing her trips to the UN, Lon­don and New York. On an­oth­er Op­po­si­tion ques­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said sea tri­als in Scot­land on the off­shore pa­trol ves­sel (2) (OPV2), the "Scar­bor­ough", were sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­cept that the com­bat sys­tem failed like the sim­i­lar sys­tem in the OPV1.

Sandy said the OPV2's sea tri­als saw the ves­sel achiev­ing a speed of 25.3 knots with a stop­ping dis­tance of 3.7 ship lengths. Al­so yes­ter­day in the House, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in an ad­dress, said Gov­ern­ment was re­view­ing the gen­der pol­i­cy for­mu­lat­ed by the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment and which was not im­ple­ment­ed in ten years.