Richard?Lord

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says a State en­ter­prise and fa­cil­i­ties for a valet em­ployed to su­per­vise the "sar­to­r­i­al im­age" of the for­mer Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment, Dr Del­mond Bak­er, are among the as­sets of the for­mer min­istry to be dis­posed.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Young said the dis­cov­ery was made dur­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the for­mer min­istry by Dr John Prince and Ethel Hec­tor-Berke­ly. The re­port was dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 2016.

Young, who is al­so Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, said the in­ves­ti­ga­tors found that the To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­istry and a State en­ter­prise, called the Hu­man Cap­i­tal De­vel­op­ment Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, was set up to se­cure sup­port for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter it failed to win any seat in the 2013 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

He said the min­istry and the com­pa­ny were set up to sup­press the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled THA.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, the re­port will be re­viewed by the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs to de­ter­mine if there were any breach­es of fidu­cia­ry du­ties, as well as crim­i­nal and oth­er fur­ther civ­il ac­tions to be tak­en against those who may have bro­ken the law.

Young said the re­port showed the for­mer To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­istry at­tempt­ed to im­ple­ment some 11 ma­jor projects and pro­grammes, adding that most of them fell short in ob­tain­ing pro­ject­ed out­comes and were ill con­ceived.

He said there was al­so ev­i­dence of poor fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and du­pli­ca­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the THA.He said the re­port rec­om­mend­ed "the dis­con­tin­u­ance of sev­en projects and the trans­fer of four for con­sid­er­a­tion by the THA for com­ple­tion."

The re­port al­so showed that "one of the largest ex­pen­di­ture items of the for­mer min­istry was con­tract em­ploy­ment. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 194 con­tract po­si­tions were cre­at­ed and filled over the five-year pe­ri­od."

He said the re­port al­so showed the for­mer min­istry's as­set base in­clud­ed 13 re­frig­er­a­tors, 13 tele­vi­sion sets, a sub­stan­tial num­ber of un­used com­put­ers, a ful­ly out­fit­ted gym­na­si­um, and fa­cil­i­ties for a valet, em­ployed to su­per­in­tend the sar­to­r­i­al im­age of the for­mer Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment, Dr Bak­er.

"So they had built a valet for the sar­to­r­i­al im­age and to im­prove the im­age of Dr Bak­er," Young added.He said the find­ings were "dis­turb­ing" and said per­ma­nent staff in the for­mer min­istry and State en­ter­prise would be re­de­ployed in the pub­lic ser­vice while con­tract em­ploy­ment would be ter­mi­nat­ed ac­cord­ing to the law.

Young said the wind­ing up would be un­der­tak­en by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole.

Bak­er hits back

For­mer Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Dr Del­mond Bak­er said yes­ter­day that the de­ci­sion by the PNM Gov­ern­ment to dis­band the min­istry and shut down the State en­ter­prise at­tached to it was a dread­ful and wicked act against the poor peo­ple of To­ba­go.

Speak­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young's an­nounce­ments, Bak­er said the com­pa­ny and min­is­ter was set up with the au­thor­i­ty of the then Cab­i­net and dis­missed claims that any­thing was be­ing done to un­der­mine the THA.

Bak­er said he was not sur­prised by Young's an­nounce­ments, as the PNM had promised to shut down the min­istry and the com­pa­ny dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign.He said the Gov­ern­ment did not ap­pear to have con­sid­ered the ef­fects of fir­ing close to 200 work­ers and trainees, adding this was in ad­di­tion to the ear­li­er dis­missal of about 100 em­ploy­ees from the min­istry.

Bak­er said he had a copy of the Cab­i­net ap­proval for the com­pa­ny "and doc­u­men­ta­tion in­di­cat­ing that we went through all the le­gal re­quire­ments in the cre­ation of the HCD­F­CL and the func­tions of the (for­mer) min­istry so as to not en­croach on any of the func­tions of the THA."

He said he was await­ing the re­port of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors, adding he was "not privy to any of the is­sues raised; there were no ques­tions sent to me, I was not asked to re­spond to any mat­ter raised in that re­port."

He in­sist­ed he had all the ap­provals from the Cab­i­net.