Richard?Lord

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is says the new PNM Gov­ern­ment is prob­ing a three-day event un­der the for­mer PP gov­ern­ment which cost tax­pay­ers an es­ti­mat­ed $40 mil­lion.

She raised the is­sue dur­ing her brief pre­sen­ta­tion to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee of Fi­nance in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

Lat­er in an in­ter­view with re­porters, Robin­son-Reg­is said: "We have clear ev­i­dence of the Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum cost­ing in the re­gion of $40 mil­lion for prob­a­bly about three days and our com­pet­i­tive­ness in­dex did not im­prove."

She added: "$40 mil­lion was spent on a three or four-day fo­rum, ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cor­rup­tion in­dex in­creased and so we have that to grap­ple with in that min­istry."

Robin­son-Reg­is said there were "al­so in­stances of oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place that are not above board in the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) and we will be ex­am­in­ing all those ar­eas."

In the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee for­mer plan­ning and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie made sev­er­al un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to raise ques­tions on the mat­ter.

House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, who chaired the five-day meet­ing, re­peat­ed­ly told Tewarie he was seek­ing to raise ques­tions un­der the wrong head.

That prompt­ed Tewarie to say: "This is not a school. It is a Par­lia­ment," caus­ing the Speak­er to de­mand that he with­draw the com­ment. Af­ter some mo­ments Tewarie lat­er with­drew the re­mark.

Lat­er dur­ing an in­ter­view with re­porters, dur­ing the 4.30 pm tea break, Tewarie ac­cused Robin­son-Reg­is of us­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee to make ac­cu­sa­tions that are both po­lit­i­cal and fidu­cia­ry.

Tewarie said he found that "to be un­rea­son­able in a Par­lia­ment in which we are rep­re­sent­ing peo­ple." He not­ed the Gov­ern­ment had a "full op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press their (its) po­si­tion but we have no op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­but or to chal­lenge the al­le­ga­tion."

In­di­cat­ing that while he was not mak­ing any al­le­ga­tions against the Speak­er, Tewarie added: "That role de­mands a cer­tain equa­nim­i­ty and it re­quires bal­ance. "What­ev­er you do for one side you got to be pre­pared to make the ac­com­mo­da­tion on the oth­er side."

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so said her com­ments in the Par­lia­ment was not linked to the for­mer min­is­ter.

Robin­son-Reg­is was al­so asked to com­ment on her state­ment in Par­lia­ment a few weeks ago, when she said: "We are in charge now."

She said she had no re­grets about the state­ment, adding it was made against the back­ground that the Gov­ern­ment had a very lim­it­ed time to have the 2016 bud­get passed.

"All I was in­di­cat­ing is that our agen­da must be set in a way that is in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T. I do not re­gret the state­ment but if it was of­fen­sive to any­body in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty then that is the on­ly thing I can say but it is in fact where we are."