Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Kelvin Charles says state­ments by Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat­narayn Ma­haraj about To­bag­o­ni­ans are "disin­gen­u­ous and un­pa­tri­ot­ic . . . and are an at­tempt to dep­re­cate the To­bag­on­ian child."

Charles was re­spond­ing to com­ments Ma­haraj' made­about To­bag­o­ni­ans on his tele­vi­sion sta­tion TV Jaagri­ti, on Tues­day. While dis­cussing the funds al­lo­cat­ed by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to lease the Jean De La Valette (JDLV) for the seabridge for one year, Ma­haraj said To­bag­o­ni­ans are "lazy" rapists who work for short hours.

The Chief Sec­re­tary de­scribed Ma­haraj's state­ments as racist and "cal­cu­lat­ed to di­vide us as a peo­ple and the twin is­land state. It shows a pal­pa­ble lack of un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the his­to­ry of the union of the two is­lands."

In a state­ment from his of­fice,Charles said Ma­haraj's state­ments were "high­ly dis­turb­ing."

“I find the com­ments of Mr Sat­narayan Ma­haraj par­tic­u­lar­ly ill-timed. Giv­en the re­cent oc­cur­rence of an­oth­er video con­tain­ing racist rant­i­ngs be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, I would think that the re­spon­si­ble thing to do as lead­ers in this coun­try is work to­wards racial uni­ty and co­he­sion," he said. "We have all seen what se­vere cir­cum­stances of racial dishar­mo­ny and dis­uni­ty have bred in places such as Rwan­da and South Africa."

Charles added that Ma­haraj "does not seem to be aware that all em­ployed per­sons in To­ba­go pay tax­es and there­fore con­tribute to the na­tion­al econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

He fur­ther point­ed out that To­ba­go busi­ness­es con­tribute to the na­tion­al purse and urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to re­ject Ma­haraj's neg­a­tive char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of them.

"Let us be our broth­er’s keep­er and hold each oth­er ac­count­able to be­ing the best em­ploy­ees, best par­ents, best stu­dents, best en­tre­pre­neurs we can be,” Charles said.

He al­so called on cit­i­zens to ral­ly against at­tempts to di­vide the na­tion.

“Now more than ever as a coun­try, we must hold true to the words of our Na­tion­al An­them, 'Side by side we stand, is­lands of the blue Caribbean sea',” he said.