DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is dis­ap­point­ed that Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo did not ad­dress the is­sue of au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go in her maid­en ad­dress to mem­bers of the Low­er and Up­per Hous­es of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on his way out of the Red House fol­low­ing the open­ing of the new par­lia­men­tary term, Au­gus­tine said the top­ic has been tossed around by sev­er­al chief sec­re­taries be­fore his time. He said he hoped the Gov­ern­ment would bring leg­is­la­tion to fi­nal­ly ad­dress this years-long re­quest.

“I think it’s about time and I’m hop­ing in this par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, al­though the Pres­i­dent didn’t make that one of her wish­es, I’m hop­ing that it will be the wish of the cur­rent par­lia­ment in the cur­rent ses­sion, for us to re­vive mat­ters con­cern­ing the au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said au­ton­o­my for the sis­ter is­land will mean that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will have sole over­sight on im­por­tant is­sues such as in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion, health­care and oth­er mat­ters that face the av­er­age To­bag­on­ian.

Delv­ing fur­ther in­to the is­sue of trans­porta­tion be­tween both is­lands, Au­gus­tine said days be­fore the MV Cabo Star was tak­en out of com­mis­sion be­cause of a fire on Au­gust 23, he told a town hall meet­ing of the im­por­tance of a re­li­able fer­ry ser­vice. He said this should be treat­ed as a pub­lic trans­porta­tion com­mod­i­ty.

“The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion... it is stress­ful to many To­ba­go busi­ness­es. And it’s not just the To­ba­go busi­ness­es that are chal­lenged by the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice but al­so there are Trinidad busi­ness­es,” he lament­ed.

He al­so raised nu­mer­ous ques­tions, in­clud­ing how old the en­gines are on the Cabo Star, whether it still has in­sur­ance and if new en­gines are re­quired. He did not ac­knowl­edge the ar­rival of the MV Em­prende­do­ra, a re­lief ves­sel, from Venezuela over the week­end.

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine said the THA was pre­pared to work with the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, with whom he has had a pub­lic war of words, to ad­dress the needs of res­i­dents of both is­lands. He cit­ed sec­tion 31 of the THA Act 40 of 1996, which stip­u­lates that the Chief Sec­re­tary and Prime Min­is­ter must meet reg­u­lar­ly.

“Notwith­stand­ing the dif­fer­ences in the pol­i­tics, notwith­stand­ing the dif­fer­ences in opin­ion, and very strong opin­ions at that, cer­tain­ly I in­tend to keep the law and to keep that chan­nel open in so far as the gov­er­nance of both is­lands are con­cerned,” he said.

Com­ment­ing on the Pres­i­dent’s ac­knowl­edge­ment that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of­ten face the brunt of cri­tique, the Chief Sec­re­tary said he hoped par­lia­ment will be more pro­duc­tive to counter the neg­a­tive stig­ma, which would al­so en­sure that To­ba­go ben­e­fits from some de­liv­er­ables.

“That cyn­i­cism is wide­spread but a large part of it is be­cause peo­ple feel as though they don’t get the de­liv­er­ables that they de­sire out of the par­lia­ment, so we hope we could cor­rect that in this ses­sion,” he said.

Au­gus­tine al­so re­vealed that he in­tends to weigh his le­gal op­tions af­ter the au­dio leak in May in­volv­ing him­self and an­oth­er THA ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber who were heard dis­cussing a plan to use THA funds to pay for a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign. He had no up­date on the po­lice probe in­to the mat­ter.

“I think you will have to ask the TTPS but on my end, my lawyers are work­ing and cer­tain­ly there will be some court ac­tions most cer­tain­ly that you can find com­ing from my end of the pond,” Au­gus­tine said.

The po­lice searched his of­fi­cial res­i­dence in Ju­ly, re­port­ed­ly leav­ing with en­velopes of ev­i­dence. The mat­ter is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Au­gus­tine al­so re­fused to ad­dress the olive branch ex­tend­ed by PDP leader Wat­son Duke last week.

“To­ba­go has so many is­sues, we have a cri­sis loom­ing be­cause of a fer­ry ser­vice. I think we should fo­cus on the more im­por­tant things in the pol­i­tics of To­ba­go,” he said.