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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Nicole to focus on MP duties

by

20161031

Shocked by news that their MP Nicole Olivierre got sacked as En­er­gy Min­is­ter, sev­er­al res­i­dents of La Brea hoped their MP would now de­vote more time to con­stituen­cy du­ties.

Sev­er­al peo­ple went to Olivierre's con­stituen­cy of­fice af­ter mid­day but it was closed up short­ly af­ter 1.30 pm less than two hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced his Cab­i­net reshuf­fle via a state­ment from his of­fice.

The MP in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day thanked Row­ley for giv­ing her the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve.

"The ex­pe­ri­ence was a valu­able one and my life will for­ev­er be changed as a re­sult. I have a greater aware­ness of what is in­volved in run­ning a gov­ern­ment and I have a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the sac­ri­fices Cab­i­net Min­is­ters are re­quired to make for the sake of their coun­try.

"Hav­ing been re­lieved of my min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio, I now have more time to spend in my con­stituen­cy and fo­cus on the needs of my con­stituents and for this op­por­tu­ni­ty I am equal­ly grate­ful," Olivierre said

Asked what were her pri­or­i­ties, Olivierre said: "There is a lot of in­fra­struc­ture work that has to be done. Un­em­ploy­ment is high. We have to bring back jobs and agri­cul­ture in the con­stituen­cy. Now I have full time to de­vote to the ad­vance­ment of the con­stituen­cy," she said.

At La Brea, Sharon Paul, of Third Av­enue, Point D'Or, who was seen mix­ing con­crete out­side her home said she felt sad for Olivierre as she was one of the few hard­work­ing MPs that the con­stituen­cy had ever seen.

Point­ing to the new­ly-paved South­ern Main Road, Paul said: "She did what she could do as an MP. Re­mem­ber elec­tion was on­ly last year and I hon­est­ly be­lieve that her heart is in the right place. She want­ed to do what was best for her con­stituents."

Marce­lyn Lewis said she was to­tal­ly shocked by the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle.

Ann Marie Di­az, al­so said she hoped Olivierre could spend more than one day a week in the con­stituen­cy of­fice.

How­ev­er, oth­er res­i­dents said Olivierre de­served to be sacked as she was in­com­pe­tent.

Kei­win Lewis said: "Peo­ple may not like what I am say­ing but that MP did not know how to deal with peo­ple. Like all the oth­er MPs who pass through here, she was no good."

Re­nal­do Moore said Olivierre had put her­self up on a pedestal and her "change in roles will now bring her back to earth.

"Maybe this will help to tone down her ar­ro­gance and she will have more time for the peo­ple who put her in Gov­ern­ment," Moore added.

Olivierre's blun­ders

Olivierre won pub­lic favour when she first took of­fice af­ter she was spot­ted us­ing the wa­ter taxi to get to work. How­ev­er, short­ly af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice in Sep­tem­ber 2015, ques­tions were raised about her abil­i­ty to work with Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) as she has been en­gaged in a wrong­ful dis­missal suit with the com­pa­ny's man­age­ment.

She was one of six first-time min­is­ters in Cab­i­net.

In De­cem­ber 2015, Olivierre made news again when she made her first ma­jor blun­der by writ­ing to en­er­gy com­pa­nies in her con­stituen­cy seek­ing con­tri­bu­tions to sup­port a week-long event which in­clud­ed a beau­ty pageant, un­der her pa­tron­age. Among the com­pa­nies she wrote, un­der her MP's let­ter­head, were Trinidad Off­shore Fab­ri­ca­tors (TOF­CO), Lake As­phalt, La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Labid­co), Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cals Ltd, Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) and in­fra­struc­ture com­pa­ny Na­mal­co, which falls un­der her min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio.

She lat­er apol­o­gised say­ing she made a mis­take. Her down­ward spi­ral con­tin­ued when she had a melt­down with her con­stituents who protest­ed for jobs last month. Olivierre lat­er said she spoke in a lan­guage her con­stituents would un­der­stand.


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