Melis­sa Doughty

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced yes­ter­day that both Caribbean Air­lines and the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty will now fall un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, now head­ed by Sen­a­tor Lar­ry Howai. She made the rev­e­la­tion when leav­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the work­shop on so­cial di­a­logue process yes­ter­day, held at the Grand Ball­room, Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, at which she de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress.

Sev­er­al min­is­ters at­tend­ed, in­clud­ing Roodal Mooni­lal and Kevin Ram­nar­ine, as well as Prakash Ra­mad­har. "I think Caribbean Air­lines is a very im­por­tant as­set of the peo­ple of T&T and I do be­lieve the best fit at this point in time is un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

"I am al­so in­tend­ing to place the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance so both those arms which will be work­ing to­geth­er for the ben­e­fit of our coun­try will be in one place." When asked about the re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of the CAL board, she said a de­ci­sion has not been made about it as yet, but that the Gov­ern­ment has said they will be look­ing at boards gen­er­al­ly.

Hav­ing reshuf­fled her Cab­i­net, she said, she will now pur­sue se­ri­ous­ly the re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of the state boards. Min­is­ters who had boards un­der their port­fo­lios were asked to give re­ports, she said, and on the ba­sis of that, the Cab­i­net will look at which are in need of re­con­fig­u­ra­tion.