CASAN­DRA THOMP­SON�FORBES

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Orville Lon­don yes­ter­day an­nounced three changes to the as­sem­bly which be­come ef­fec­tive next week. The an­nounce­ment was made at the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil's news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. Lon­don said the re­align­ment of the coun­cil was prompt­ed due to the ab­sence of Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Hilton Sandy, who suf­fered a stroke last Sep­tem­ber 21.

He said ac­cord­ing to the THA Act No 40 of 1996, the Chief Sec­re­tary could on­ly op­er­ate with a to­tal of eight sec­re­taries in ad­di­tion to the Chief Sec­re­tary so the ad­just­ments were nec­es­sary to en­sure the as­sem­bly con­tin­ued to func­tion at an op­ti­mum lev­el. He added: "In those cir­cum­stances I have made the de­ci­sion to do some re­align­ment among the di­vi­sions of the THA.

"Coun­cilor De­on Isaac, who is now an as­sis­tant sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary, his ap­point­ment as an as­sis­tant sec­re­tary would be re­voked and he would be ap­point­ed as Sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of Set­tle­ments and Labour. "Huey Cadette, Sec­re­tary of Set­tle­ments and Labour will move to the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sport and Coun­cilor Gary Melville to the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties."

Mean­while, Sandy, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Rox­bor­ough/De­laford is ex­pect­ed to trav­el abroad for fur­ther med­ical treat­ment. Lon­don said the med­ical chief of staff at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Nathaniel Duke, has been over­see­ing Sandy's re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion at the hos­pi­tal and at his home for the past four months but had rec­om­mend­ed he con­tin­ued his treat­ment in Flori­da, Unit­ed States. Sandy is ex­pect­ed to leave To­ba­go with­in the next two weeks and the THA would foot the bill.

"The de­ci­sion was tak­en that he should be sent to the Bap­tist Med­ical Cen­tre Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Unit, South Flori­da, for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, as­sess­ment and man­age­ment. "The THA ,ob­vi­ous­ly based on his en­ti­tle­ment as a sec­re­tary, will be foot­ing the bill for that par­tic­u­lar ini­tia­tive and that will in­clude ac­com­mo­da­tion, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ses­sions and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues," Lon­don added.