Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says his work­load was too heavy and he was grate­ful for Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley's "in­ter­ven­tion" in ap­point­ing Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter PM, Stu­art Young, to chair the Cab­i­net's Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es sub-com­mit­tee .

"His in­ter­ven­tion has tak­en a lot of pres­sure off of me,"Im­bert said yes­ter­day deny­ing he was be­ing pun­ished for his per­for­mance and re­cent con­tro­ver­sies in­clud­ing his "0-0-0" wage re­straint state­ments and "ri­ot­ing" quip about gas price hikes.

Row­ley con­firmed in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day that Young now chairs the F&GP com­mit­tee – which deals with ma­jor mat­ters be­fore Cab­i­net de­cides on them.

Im­bert head­ed that since Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice in Sep­tem­ber last year.

UNC MP Gan­ga Singh had asked if it was ac­cept­ed pro­to­col for the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to chair F&GP. Row­ley said for­mer PNM Min­is­ter Lenny Saith had chaired F&GP for five years though he wasn't in Fi­nance.

Saith was Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and had head­ed Plan­ning, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and In­for­ma­tion, and En­er­gy. Im­bert said yes­ter­day the change was made by the PM two weeks ago.

"My work­load is ex­treme­ly heavy. In ad­di­tion to Fi­nance du­ties and the dif­fi­cult task of re­struc­tur­ing of the econ­o­my in the face of the col­lapse in en­er­gy rev­enues, es­tab­lish­ing the new pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tem, im­ple­ment­ing the prop­er­ty tax, man­ag­ing the Gov­ern­ment's di­vest­ment pro­gramme for 2017, etc, etc, I chair sev­er­al oth­er Gov­ern­ment com­mit­tees and have over­sight of over 50 State en­ter­pris­es al­so."

"The PM was of the view, that I was very much over­loaded. The ad­just­ment will free up some of my time to at­tend to my sub­stan­tive work, which I ap­pre­ci­ate."