Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Far­ley Au­gus­tine has every Sec­re­tary of the As­sem­bly re­port­ing to the pub­lic on their suc­cess­es and fail­ures in what he has deemed “Man­date Mon­day.”

De­liv­er­ing brief open­ing re­marks dur­ing an ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil me­dia brief­ing on Mon­day, the Chief Sec­re­tary said he is try­ing to change the cul­ture of gov­er­nance on the is­land.

“I am hop­ing by do­ing this we will change the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of the is­land and this will re­sult in what we call open gov­er­nance, This process it is not about per­fec­tion but about track­ing progress,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine al­so hand­ed out let­ters of man­dates- to out­line what is ex­pect­ed in the com­ing months- to each di­vi­sion head af­ter they de­liv­ered their re­ports on suc­cess­es and fail­ures over the past three months.

In Jan­u­ary dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, Au­gus­tine pre­sent­ed an in-depth list of projects his Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) as­sem­bly want­ed to achieve in three months, promis­ing to re­turn to the elec­torate with an up­date af­ter that time had passed.

On Mon­day he said, “As an is­land, we are frus­trat­ed that there are many things that we hoped to achieve, that we hoped we could have got­ten don­key years ago and we still have not achieved, so by us­ing this modal­i­ty, we will be keep­ing all line sec­re­taries in check.”

Au­gus­tine said this mode of as­sess­ment will al­low him to as­sess his sec­re­taries and de­ter­mine whether they should be re­as­signed, re­moved or re­main in their po­si­tions. 

Re­porter: Shar­lene Ram­per­sad