The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Gov­ern­ment's ap­point­ment of the five-mem­ber To­ba­go Lo­cal Pub­lic As­sis­tance Board made its way in­to Thurs­day's ple­nary sit­ting of the House of As­sem­bly. A mo­tion call­ing on the House to con­demn the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to ig­nore the THA rec­om­men­da­tions and name its own ap­pointees was passed with the four Mi­nor­i­ty mem­bers present ab­stain­ing when the vote was tak­en.

The mo­tion, pre­sent­ed by Sec­re­tary of Health and So­cial Ser­vices As­sem­bly­man Clau­dia Groome-Duke, al­so called on the House to urge the gov­ern­ment to take the nec­es­sary steps to have those ap­point­ments re­scind­ed and to fa­cil­i­tate the ur­gent ap­point­ment of the THA nom­i­nees to the Board. An amend­ed mo­tion pre­sent­ed by Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Ash­worth Jack was de­feat­ed 10 to 4.

In pre­sent­ing the mo­tion for de­bate Groome-Duke said it was about an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion that was yet to be re­solved in the se­lec­tion of a Lo­cal Pub­lic As­sis­tance Board to car­ry out the busi­ness of the As­sem­bly in the de­liv­ery of ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient ser­vices to the vul­ner­a­ble and dis­ad­van­taged in To­ba­go. She said the qual­i­ty of life of many of the is­land's se­nior cit­i­zens and so­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged in­di­vid­u­als was de­pen­dent on a time­ly and sen­si­tive re­sponse to their re­quests for the se­nior cit­i­zens pen­sion and oth­er forms of so­cial as­sis­tance and her Di­vi­sion had demon­strat­ed its com­mit­ment by en­sur­ing that se­nior cit­i­zens were tak­en care of in the evening of their years.

Groome-Duke dis­closed that in 2011, 3,278 old age pen­sion­ers re­ceived a to­tal of $102,978,600; 555 peo­ple re­ceived $5,466,300 in pub­lic as­sis­tance; 278 peo­ple re­ceived $,209,400 in dis­abil­i­ty grants while hun­dreds more re­ceived thou­sands of dol­lars in oth­er forms of as­sis­tance. She point­ed out that the THA Act No 40 of 1996 which forms part of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go passed by the Par­lia­ment out­lined the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that fall un­der the purview of the As­sem­bly. She added that the As­sem­bly had cer­tain del­e­gat­ed pow­ers which were en­shrined in the Act that gave it spe­cif­ic ar­eas of ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty un­der the Fifth Sched­ule, one be­ing so­cial wel­fare.

She said, in the same way that the Con­sti­tu­tion di­rect­ed that the Cab­i­net of T&T be re­spon­si­ble for and car­ry out the du­ties of the gov­ern­ment, so, too, the Con­sti­tu­tion dic­tates that the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of To­ba­go car­ry out the func­tions of the As­sem­bly. She said there are on­ly three of the five mem­bers pre­scribed on the Board at present, two from the Lee­ward dis­trict with an­oth­er mem­ber re­sid­ing in Trinidad. The quo­rum of the Board is three and this ac­tion led to an im­passe which was hav­ing an ad­verse ef­fect on the wel­fare of the se­nior cit­i­zens and oth­er so­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged in To­ba­go.