Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Dr Anselm Lon­don is de­scrib­ing as "non­sense and a non-is­sue" claims by To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple leader Ash­worth Jack that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fi­cial used $22,000 from the THA for eye surgery.

Jack made the claim dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing of the TOP in Sou Sou Lands, To­ba­go, on Mon­day night.

"The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Cir­cu­lar No 4 of 2009, states, in­ter alia, en­ti­tle­ment of med­ical at­ten­tion treat­ment and pre­scribed drugs at a health es­tab­lish­ment. Med­ical at­ten­tion can be ob­tained at re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. The per­son went on to say that based on the cir­cu­lar from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the sec­re­tary of fi­nance was not en­ti­tled to get a re­fund," Jack said.

He said Lon­don had the surgery at a pri­vate hos­pi­tal and claimed the fund­ing was pro­vid­ed against the ad­vice of the min­is­ter of fi­nance and that Lon­don was sub­se­quent­ly re­fund­ed un­der the au­thor­i­ty of Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don.

Dr Lon­don, when con­tact­ed on the mat­ter said he was not pre­pared to waste any time com­ment­ing on Jack's claim.

He said Jack should re­fer to the THA's Sec­re­taries Con­di­tions of Ser­vice and be guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly. Lon­don in­sist­ed he act­ed in ac­cor­dance with the doc­u­ment and that he had done noth­ing wrong.

Lon­don said Jack's claim was not wor­thy of any oth­er re­sponse.

Mean­while, a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment has dis­missed calls for Hilton Sandy, the par­ty's can­di­date for Belle Gar­den/Rox­bor­ough/De­laford and Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, to with­draw from the elec­tion be­cause of his "Cal­cut­ta ship" com­ments.

Sandy told a PNM cam­paign meet­ing last Fri­day, in the pres­ence of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don, that "a ship from Cul­cut­ta was wait­ing to take over the is­land" if the PNM was un­suc­cess­ful in the Jan­u­ary 21 THA elec­tion.

Sandy has since apol­o­gised for what has been deemed racist com­ments and the source said the PNM "was not pre­pared to ad­vance an­oth­er par­ty's elec­tion cam­paign."