?The In­do-Trin­ba­go Equal­i­ty Coun­cil (Itec) claims it has ob­tained elu­sive "se­cret" schol­ar­ships award­ed by the Cul­ture Min­istry since 2003. It al­so said a doc­u­ment re­vealed "a dis­turb­ing im­age where the In­do-Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion is un­der-rep­re­sent­ed." Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald had said the dis­clo­sure of the re­cip­i­ents' iden­ti­ties would be against the pub­lic in­ter­est. Leader of Op­po­si­tion Busi­ness in the Sen­ate Wade Mark had asked Mc­Don­ald to an­swer the ques­tion in the Up­per House in Feb­ru­ary, but she didn't. A news re­lease yes­ter­day by Itec said: "What the Op­po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment failed to ob­tain, the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) achieved."

It quot­ed Mc­Don­ald as say­ing: "The po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment is that dis­clos­ing this in­for­ma­tion 'would in­volve un­rea­son­able dis­clo­sure of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion," name­ly, the ed­u­ca­tion his­to­ry of the in­di­vid­ual re­cip­i­ents." The re­lease said that, iron­i­cal­ly, the very same FOIA used by the min­is­ter to de­ny Par­lia­ment the in­for­ma­tion was used to ob­tain the names and amounts of the schols via the courts. On the is­sue of In­do-Trinida­di­an un­der-rep­re­sen­ta­tion, it said: "Giv­en the vo­lu­mi­nous na­ture of the in­for­ma­tion, Itec is still in the process of col­lat­ing the in­for­ma­tion, but will be pleased to make it avail­able to in­ter­est­ed peo­ple."