Richard Lord

Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says he is a lucky man not to have been em­braced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in re­cent weeks. He said so dur­ing a vis­it to Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, to wit­ness a dredg­ing ex­er­cise to re­duce flood­ing in the area. He was ac­com­pa­nied by per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Cheryl Black­man. He said: "When­ev­er a Prime Min­is­ter em­braces you, it is nor­mal­ly a kiss of death and I am for­tu­nate the Prime Min­is­ter has not em­braced me late­ly," Warn­er said in an in­ter­view with re­porters af­ter the vis­it. He was re­spond­ing to a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle last week­end, which claimed Warn­er's Trans­port port­fo­lio was tak­en away be­cause of the per­cep­tion he was more pop­u­lar than Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Warn­er said he had no ev­i­dence to sup­port the ru­mour but it was in the pub­lic do­main. He said he was not un­du­ly wor­ried about the ru­mour, say­ing he was not los­ing any sleep or hair over it. He ad­mit­ted hear­ing the ru­mour "for a long time," He said: "it will not both­er me. It has not pre­vent­ed me from do­ing my work." He added that the me­dia should in­ves­ti­gate it. He said he was aware that "when you do good deeds, your good deeds don't go un­pun­ished and if for some rea­son I have to be pun­ished for my good deeds, then so be it." Asked how was it af­fect­ing re­la­tions with­in Cab­i­net, Warn­er said he main­tained a pro­fes­sion­al con­duct. He said: "You do what you have to do and (then) leave. Af­ter I do what I have to do I leave. I don't par­ty and drink and min­gle too much."

He then re­peat­ed that the ru­mours were in the pub­lic do­main "and un­til such time that I have any strong ev­i­dence, then I will know what I have to do but I don't have any (ev­i­dence) as yet." Warn­er said his work was at a stand­still be­cause he was not aware of the sched­ule of the Works port­fo­lio. He said oth­er min­is­ters, in­clud­ing the Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, was in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion. He said the min­is­ters were now un­able to func­tion prop­er­ly. "Un­til we know what our sched­ules and pro­grammes are, we are lit­er­al­ly at a stand­still," Warn­er added. He said the fi­nan­cial cost to re­align the min­is­ters was "tremen­dous and I sin­cere­ly hope it is not an ex­er­cise that you would have to go back and un­do. It will cost us some mil­lions well," Warn­er in­sist­ed.

He said he was told that Works must deal with works and in­fra­struc­ture. "What that means, I re­al­ly don't know. I don't know what in­fra­struc­ture means at this point, though I have asked," he added. In re­sponse to fur­ther ques­tions Warn­er said when the Prime Min­is­ter was ready with the com­plete sched­ule of re­aligned port­fo­lios she would in­form the min­is­ters. Asked if he was a dis­ap­point­ed man, Warn­er said: "It doesn't pre­vent me from serv­ing." He said ser­vice had not to do with him be­ing a min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment. "You don't have to be a min­is­ter to serve. You don't have to be in sev­er­al boards to serve. If you want to serve you can serve and I have been do­ing that for a long time," Warn­er added.