Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day heaped prais­es on St Au­gus­tine MP Prakash Ra­mad­har for his ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion to T&T ef­forts rekin­dling its re­la­tion­ship with Ja­maica dur­ing a five-day trip there.

Ques­tioned last night about his de­ci­sion to in­vite Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to Ja­maica, Ra­mad­har's con­tri­bu­tion and if the Gov­ern­ment would ex­tend fur­ther in­vi­ta­tions to the Op­po­si­tion MP on State trips, Row­ley said:

"Mr Ra­mad­har is a very ex­pe­ri­enced lawyer. He is a very ex­pe­ri­enced par­lia­men­tar­i­an and he is a mem­ber of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"I can tell you, at crit­i­cal mo­ments in our dis­cus­sions in Ja­maica his in­put was very valu­able as a mem­ber of the del­e­ga­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Probed on if Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to in­vite more Op­po­si­tion MPs on State vis­its af­ter his del­e­ga­tion's ar­rival from Kingston, Row­ley said:

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. It all de­pends on the mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion. If they are in­vit­ed and they turn up, then so be it. If they do not turn up, well we would go with­out them."

Ra­mad­har, how­ev­er, steered clear of field­ing ques­tions from the T&T Guardian con­cern­ing com­ments made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who crit­i­cised him for ac­cept­ing the in­vi­ta­tion by Row­ley.

In­stead, he said he would hold a press con­fer­ence soon to clear the air on cer­tain is­sues.

"Tonight was all about the Prime Min­is­ter and the trip. I don't want to com­ment," a smil­ing Ra­mad­har said in the VIP room of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar knocked Ra­mad­har for ac­cept­ing the in­vi­ta­tion, say­ing an Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­an could not rep­re­sent the Op­po­si­tion bench with­out hold­ing con­sul­ta­tions with her.

She said nei­ther Row­ley nor Ra­mad­har had con­sult­ed her about the is­sue or sought any ad­vice from her.

Cou­va North MP, Ra­mona Ram­di­al, who was al­so in­vit­ed, de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion af­ter con­sult­ing her, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Al­so among Row­ley's del­e­ga­tion were For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Stu­art Young.

Row­ley de­scribed his five-day trip to Ja­maica as hec­tic, ex­haust­ing and suc­cess­ful, he hav­ing met the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dents, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials.

Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness had in­vit­ed Row­ley to his coun­try when they first met in Be­lize.

The in­vi­ta­tion was prompt­ed by the seem­ing­ly strained trade re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries, af­ter Ja­maicans, who were de­port­ed from T&T, had called for a boy­cott of T&T goods there.

Row­ley said if he had not made the trip to deal with the is­sue, which was a de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion, could have re­sult­ed in some very un­de­sir­able con­se­quences for both coun­tries.

In par­tic­u­lar, Row­ley said T&T's ca­pac­i­ty could have been faced with chal­lenges with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor here, lead­ing to the pos­si­ble loss of jobs.

Among the is­sues dis­cussed dur­ing the trip, he said, were the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my, free move­ment, se­cu­ri­ty, Caribbean Air­lines and the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate).

Some of the busi­ness­es Row­ley and his del­e­ga­tion met were the Ja­maica Cham­ber of Com­merce, health ser­vices, For­eign Af­fairs and the Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion

He said his trip was to put T&T"s po­si­tion to Ja­maicans to whom some mis­un­der­stand­ings and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions were ad­vanced from cer­tains quar­ters.

Row­ley said the po­si­tion of free move­ment of cit­i­zens from across the re­gion came up.

"We dis­cussed at length a re­quire­ment for our cit­i­zens of our re­gion, gov­erned un­der the Ch­aguara­mas Treaty, to be prop­er­ly in­formed about the con­di­tions un­der which free move­ment of cit­i­zens ex­ists," Row­ley said.

While there is sub­stan­tial free move­ment in the re­gion, Row­ley said there were some con­di­tions where the move­ment could be re­strict­ed. He not­ed that T&T has had to re­strict move­ment of some peo­ple to our shores.

Row­ley said he was able to speak to some peo­ple in Ja­maica who were par­tic­u­lar­ly ag­griev­ed, mouth pieces and in­flu­ence-mak­ers.

He said his Gov­ern­ment left Ja­maica with the un­der­stand­ing that mat­ter was not be­hind us.

As lead­ers of Cari­com, he said, both Ja­maica and T&T have to set good ex­am­ples.

He said at the lev­el of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my, steps had been tak­en for a re­view of work to be done and on work that had been done.

An­oth­er eye­brow-rais­ing de­vel­op­ment, Row­ley said, was when they were in­formed that Ja­maica had put in place a com­mit­tee to re­view its re­la­tion­ship with Cari­com.

"That dis­cus­sion was the sub­ject of ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions in some quar­ters," he said.