Rose­marie Sant

Pres­i­dent's House says the $7.9 mil­lion pro­jec­tion for over­seas trav­el for the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent "was a pro­jec­tion which the Pres­i­dent's of­fice sent to the Min­istry of Fi­nance pri­or to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2016-2017 na­tion­al bud­get. But it says the pro­pos­al was slashed to $900.000 thus mak­ing the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al "a non-is­sue."

At a meet­ing of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) on Thurs­day it was re­vealed that the doc­u­ment de­tail­ing the $7.9 mil­lion in­clud­ed two trips to Eu­rope, sev­er­al trips to the Unit­ed States, two trips of Mex­i­co, one trip to the Ba­hamas and two trips to Chi­na.

But com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at Pres­i­dent's House, Theron Boodan, told the T&T Guardian "the doc­u­ment de­tail­ing the trips and the cost, be­came a dead doc­u­ment the minute Cab­i­net gave a new pro­pos­al. It be­came a non-is­sue."

Boodan said the Pres­i­dent is "com­mit­ted to work­ing with­in the al­lo­ca­tion giv­en to the Of­fice."

He could, how­ev­er, throw no light on how a doc­u­ment which he de­scribed as "dead and no longer an is­sue" was sent to the mem­bers of the Par­lia­ment Com­mit­tee pri­or to the meet­ing on Thurs­day.

Boodan could not say whether there are any of­fi­cial trips planned by the Pres­i­dent for the first quar­ter of this year.

He said the Pres­i­dent has an in­vi­ta­tion from the Pres­i­dent of Ugan­da and the Chief Jus­tice of Ugan­da to ad­dress a law con­fer­ence in Ugan­da ear­ly this year, but he could not say whether the Pres­i­dent would at­tend.

At Thurs­day's meet­ing Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harath said when he re­ceived the doc­u­ment he was "ab­solute­ly con­found­ed" that the very first trip to Eu­rope "is near dou­ble the sum ap­proved by Par­lia­ment for the en­tire fis­cal year."

Chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer at Pres­i­dent's House, Gre­go­ry Ser­rette, ex­plained that the sub­mis­sion by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent was mere­ly a pro­jec­tion.

He said "the fig­ures would be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for its ap­proval and on­ly then would the funds be utilised."

Boodan ex­plained that this pro­ce­dure had been in place since the time of for­mer Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son and was al­so used when Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards was in of­fice.

A for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter con­firmed that Pres­i­dent's House like all oth­er en­ti­ties is re­quired to send sub­mis­sions to the Min­istry of Fi­nance pri­or to the for­mu­la­tion of the bud­get.

Those doc­u­ments are ex­am­ined by tech­nocrats and it is the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance who would take them to the Cab­i­net.

Pri­or to the in­for­ma­tion from the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent Head of the Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence De­part­ment of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath had raised con­cerns about the hefty spend on for­eign trav­el.

He said,"Every year it is the norm for the Pres­i­dent to be out at least three times. This year we are hear­ing nine times or some­thing like that, is this of­fi­cial busi­ness?"

Ra­goonath said if the trav­el in­cludes a state vis­it "then the host coun­try bears the cost for the state vis­it. We pay the air­fare and the host coun­try pays for ac­com­mo­da­tion and oth­er ex­pens­es."

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Maukash Bas­deo said the "buck re­al­ly stops with the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer," in this case the per­son who holds the post is Gre­go­ry Ser­rette "he will be held ac­count­able.'

But Ser­rette takes in­struc­tion from the Pres­i­dent, so who re­al­ly is ac­count­able?

To this Bas­deo said: "There is a thin line that sep­a­rates both of­fices, it is like a Min­is­ter and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, the Min­is­ter is not the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer, that is the role of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary."

Le­gal Of­fi­cer at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent Shoshan­na Lal­la spoke to the lack of a Hu­man Re­source Man­ag­er at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, this she said had caused the of­fice to breach the re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion process out­lined in the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer's cir­cu­lar.

In this sce­nario said it was the ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer, the Pres­i­dent and oth­er of­fi­cers who sat in on the in­ter­view­ing process.

Her ex­pla­na­tion fol­lowed a ques­tion from La Brea MP Nicole Olivierre as to how a pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion of con­flict of in­ter­est would be dealt with.

Ser­rette said while there was no "writ­ten pol­i­cy, if any sit­u­a­tion arise we would be able to ar­rest the sit­u­a­tion based on best prac­tices."