Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment will be re­view­ing the prac­tice of State cor­po­ra­tion chair­men serv­ing on oth­er boards and re­ceiv­ing mul­ti­ple stipends, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day.

His com­ment at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, fol­lowed crit­i­cism by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar about such a sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ry Brooks.

In Par­lia­ment, three weeks ago Gov­ern­ment re­vealed Brooks heads eight oth­er NGC sub­sidiaries. On Wednes­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so not­ed that Brooks is head­ing "11 or 12" boards of the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­cern at one per­son serv­ing on so many boards and be­ing in charge of over $40-plus bil­lion worth of tax­pay­ers' as­sets. She said such mul­ti­ple di­rec­tor­ships could earn a per­son as much as $100,000 a month plus trav­el­ling/util­i­ty and oth­er al­lowances.

At yes­ter­day's brief­ing Im­bert said the prac­tice of State board chair­men serv­ing on oth­er boards had been done over the past 20 years, in­clud­ing un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and the Op­po­si­tion Leader should have known that.

He said the pre­vi­ous NGC chair­man was al­so on the boards of oth­er en­er­gy sub­sidiaries which he did not name. How­ev­er, Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment would re­view the prac­tice.

Af­ter he spoke, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told T&T Guardian: "It's about time... we wel­come such changes, hav­ing seen Mr Brooks serv­ing on al­most 12 boards."

Im­bert main­tained Gov­ern­ment had felt it was im­por­tant for Brooks to head oth­er NGC com­pa­nies due to NGC's "con­di­tion" – do­ing the Waste Wa­ter and oth­er projects – when the PNM took of­fice.

Im­bert al­so de­nied the Op­po­si­tion's claim that Eu­ro­pean Union fund­ing for cane farm­ers was avail­able. He said checks with the Fi­nance Min­istry yes­ter­day con­firmed fund­ing had not ar­rived.

He, how­ev­er, added that he would speak to Per­sad-Bisses­sar about sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the gam­ing/gam­bling sec­tor. Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er told the T&T Guardian the Op­po­si­tion would first have to see what the leg­is­la­tion in­volved be­fore any com­mit­ment.

Reg­u­la­tion of the gam­ing sec­tor and the re­turn of the Prop­er­ty Tax were among items the IMF team, which vis­it­ed T&T re­cent­ly, not­ed Gov­ern­ment had re­course to, con­cern­ing rev­enue-rais­ing.

Im­bert said the IMF gave Gov­ern­ment "quite a favourable re­sponse" and the team stat­ed T&T was not in a cri­sis and had sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic buffers.

Im­bert said an es­ti­mat­ed $7 bil­lion-$10 bil­lion was spent on the gam­ing sec­tor an­nu­al­ly and Gov­ern­ment pro­ject­ed col­lect­ing about $500 mil­lion un­der pro­posed reg­u­la­tion mea­sures.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie an­nounced that Caribbean New Me­dia Group deputy chair­man Tim­o­thy Af­fon­so had been ap­point­ed to re­place for­mer chair­man He­len Dray­ton who quit last month.