Richard?Lord

Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts claims Ver­na St Rose-Greaves was fired be­cause some­one in the Min­istry of Gen­der Af­fairs, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, which she once head­ed, sent a sane woman to St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal. He al­so claimed St Rose-Greaves at­tempt­ed to de­rail the Cab­i­net over the gen­der pol­i­cy.

Roberts spoke at a news brief­ing out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, yes­ter­day. He claimed St Rose-Greaves knew a sane woman was sent to the men­tal in­sti­tu­tion. "Nev­er in the his­to­ry of T&T have we seen such a sil­ly, un­nec­es­sary oc­cur­rence," Roberts added.

His state­ment was a ref­er­ence to the forced ad­mis­sion of Cheryl Miller, an em­ploy­ee of the Gen­der Af­fairs Min­istry, to the St Ann's Hos­pi­tal ear­li­er this year. She was re­leased af­ter ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State. Roberts said the sacked min­is­ter was nev­er at­tacked by the PM, "even though that was one of the most ridicu­lous de­ci­sions in min­is­te­r­i­al his­to­ry."

He said St Rose-Greaves, a for­mer so­cial work­er, al­so lost her Cab­i­net po­si­tion be­cause she tried to rail­road the Cab­i­net in­to sup­port­ing her po­si­tion on the pro­posed gen­der pol­i­cy, which is yet to be ap­proved by the Cab­i­net. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in­sis­tent that all groups and in­di­vid­u­als must be giv­en ad­e­quate op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ment on the con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment.

"Ver­na St Rose-Greaves de­cid­ed to, not on­ly in the me­dia, but in­side the Cab­i­net to rail­road the en­tire Cab­i­net. The Prime Min­is­ter did not stand for that and that is why Ver­na is on the out­side," Roberts said. He called on her to apol­o­gise to the PM. Speak­ing close to the spot where en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh staged his hunger strike, Roberts said he had lost all re­spect for the for­mer min­is­ter and she should apol­o­gise to the Prime Min­is­ter for the al­le­ga­tions.

St Rose-Greaves had claimed in an ex­clu­sive Sun­day Guardian re­port that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not in charge of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. She said in a sub­se­quent tele­vi­sion in­ter­view that there were peo­ple in the Cab­i­net who were black­mail­ing the PM.

But Roberts dis­missed those claims yes­ter­day. He said he was "deeply hurt" by St Rose-Greaves' com­ments about the Prime Min­is­ter and de­nounced what he called a "vile, dis­hon­est and vi­cious" at­tack. He added: "It was a das­tard­ly at­tack on the Prime Min­is­ter and I can as­sure you there are no ques­tions about her fac­ul­ties and whether she (the PM) is in charge or not. The PM is not on­ly in con­trol, she is in to­tal con­trol."

He said he could wish St Rose-Greaves a mer­ry Christ­mas, "but I will not be com­ing by her be­cause, clear­ly, the grapes by her are very sour."