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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Two PSs take off

...No au­tho­ri­sa­tion from PSC, Coop­er

by

20140607

Two per­ma­nent sec­re­taries have gone Ab­sent With­out Of­fi­cial Leave (AWOL).The Sun­day Guardian has learned that Sport PS Ash­win Creed and Tourism PS Ju­liana Jo­han-Boodram have both left their min­istries with­out fol­low­ing prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col and, as such, no one has been put in place to act on their be­half.The lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion means that there are no ac­count­ing of­fi­cers on the job, leav­ing the min­istries rud­der­less. It al­so means that no pay­ments can be au­tho­rised or ap­proved.

The Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that both Creed and Jo­han-Boodram could face dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion from the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) for leav­ing the coun­try with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion.Creed has been ab­sent from his job for al­most a month. He was ex­pect­ed back on the job on May 26, as his au­tho­rised leave end­ed on May 23.Jo­han-Boodram, mean­while, left the coun­try to go to Ar­genti­na to watch the foot­ball match be­tween T&T and Ar­genti­na.

Up un­til the time the pho­tographs of her sur­faced on June 5, head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice/PS to the Prime Min­is­ter Reynold Coop­er was un­aware she was away from the job.Coop­er was al­so in the dark as to whether Creed was back on the job or not.The Sun­day Guardian checked with staff at the Min­istry of Sport and was in­formed that Creed had not been back at his of­fice for some time, and they were un­sure when he would be re­turn­ing.

"He is on va­ca­tion un­til next week, we think," said the per­son who an­swered the of­fice line on Fri­day.An au­to­mat­ed voice record­ing at Creed's of­fice at the min­istry stat­ed his mail­box was full.

No one was as­signed by me–Howai

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, in an e-mail ex­change, said no one was ap­point­ed to act as ac­count­ing of­fi­cer at ei­ther of the min­istries."We have not made those ap­point­ments to which you re­fer as we have not yet re­ceived the ap­proval of the PSC," he said."That means that the rel­e­vant min­istry didn't make a re­quest of the PS to the PM (Coop­er)," he said.

Howai ex­plained that the process is that the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to the Prime Min­is­ter (Coop­er) as­signs the of­fi­cer and then the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my (MoFE) makes the ap­point­ment on the ba­sis of that as­sign­ment."The MoFE can­not ap­point some­one with­out that in­put from the PS to the PM. The ap­point­ment, how­ev­er, on­ly takes place af­ter re­ceiv­ing the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) who acts on the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DPA)," he said.

Call­ing creed

While Jo­han-Boodram's ab­sence was ex­plained by the Ar­gen­tin­ian foot­ball friend­ly, there has been no rea­son forth­com­ing for Creed's pro­longed ab­sence.It was ini­tial­ly re­port­ed that Coop­er said Creed sought emer­gency leave from April 14 to 22, was in Chi­na from April 28 to 30 on of­fi­cial busi­ness, and then took or­di­nary va­ca­tion leave from May 15 to 23.

Creed has been out of the coun­try for the past 16 days–with­out ap­ply­ing for fur­ther leave–even though he is cur­rent­ly em­broiled in an au­dit by the Fi­nance Min­istry's Cen­tral Au­dit Unit in­to the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar spend­ing of the Life Sport pro­gramme. He re­port­ed­ly re­ceived death threats in con­nec­tion with the pro­gramme.

Coop­er:No PS must go on leave­with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion

Coop­er, in a tele­phone in­ter­view Fri­day, said as far as he was aware, Jo­han-Boodram was sup­posed to be in the coun­try as no ap­pli­ca­tion for leave, va­ca­tion or time away came be­fore him or Cab­i­net. He said he was aware that her line min­is­ter, Ger­ald Hadeed, had sought and gained Cab­i­net ap­proval to at­tend the game in Ar­genti­na, but said Jo­han-Boodram did not have that ap­proval.Hadeed, how­ev­er, did not go to Ar­genti­na.

When pic­tures of Jo­han-Boodram at Wednes­day's foot­ball game be­tween T&T and Ar­genti­na showed her hap­pi­ly cel­e­brat­ing from the stands, this left Coop­er stunned."No PS must go on va­ca­tion with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion, be­cause it is on­ly with au­tho­ri­sa­tion that we can ap­point some­one to act in their ab­sence," Coop­er said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion Sec­tion 85.1, a PS must seek leave from the min­is­ter and once there is no ob­jec­tion, that re­quest is for­ward­ed to Coop­er for in­for­ma­tion pur­pos­es and so that he can then di­rect the PSC to ap­point some­one as act­ing PS for the du­ra­tion of the ab­sence.That did not hap­pen in ei­ther case.

PSC in the dark

Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Dr Mar­jorie Thor­pe was al­so un­aware that both PSs were AWOL.The PSC re­lies on di­rec­tion from ei­ther Coop­er or the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Lar­ry Howai, who can ap­point a fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer to act in the PS' ab­sence.In a short tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day, Thor­pe said the PSC had no re­quests be­fore them."I can­not re­mem­ber those com­ing be­fore us," she said.Thor­pe then called back, hav­ing con­ferred with her oth­er com­mis­sion­ers."No, noth­ing has come be­fore us," she said.


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