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Friday, August 1, 2025

Le Hunte says he has no rift with Rowley

by

Shaliza Hassanali
1900 days ago
20200518
Former Public Utilities Minister Robert Le Hunte

Former Public Utilities Minister Robert Le Hunte

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte says he has no re­grets over his res­ig­na­tion from Cab­i­net and has no rift with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

And de­spite stun­ning his col­leagues with the move over the week­end, Le Hunte says he will re­main com­mit­ted to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) since they are his fam­i­ly.

“So re­grets, I don’t have re­grets,” Le Hunte told the T&T Guardian, say­ing peo­ple will judge him on his per­for­mance and val­ues.

Asked if a rift be­tween him­self and Row­ley had led to his res­ig­na­tion, Le Hunte put the mat­ter to rest, stat­ing cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, “There is no ten­sion on my side with re­gards to the Prime Min­is­ter.”

It was re­port­ed that Le Hunte re­signed be­cause Cab­i­net’s would not ap­prove his pro­pos­al of a $1.5 bil­lion me­ter­ing sys­tem for WASA cus­tomers.

To this, he said, “I note the re­cent spec­u­la­tive re­ports based on anony­mous sources which at­tempt to give an ac­count of what tran­spired in Cab­i­net. My in­tegri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism dic­tates that I do not breach the sanc­ti­ty of Cab­i­net and I will do so un­der no cir­cum­stances. I did not achieve the strides made in my pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer by mak­ing out­ra­geous pro­pos­als and dis­play­ing pub­lic in­sub­or­di­na­tion.”

Le Hunte, how­ev­er, thanked Row­ley for pro­vid­ing him with count­less op­por­tu­ni­ties to grow and serve T&T.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has stood by me a num­ber of times when oth­er peo­ple may not have,” he said.

He said fol­low­ing his res­ig­na­tion, he was touched by words of en­cour­age­ment from peo­ple he had helped dur­ing his tenure.

“Their grat­i­tude is suf­fi­cient for me to feel jus­ti­fied that I have done the work. That is all I ever want­ed. My ex­pec­ta­tion was to serve peo­ple and I have done that,” Le Hunte said, adding he has al­ways been a pro­fes­sion­al.

“As a pro­fes­sion­al, I did what I did. If you don’t stand for some­thing you would stand for noth­ing. I have stood for some­thing and I have of­fered my let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter, which he ac­cept­ed.”

He said his res­ig­na­tion re­quired care­ful thought and con­sul­ta­tion with God.

“If you feel that you have a pol­i­cy po­si­tion that is not the po­si­tion, then I think you need to of­fer your res­ig­na­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter, which is what I did. I al­ways do what I feel is right and prop­er.”

In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter to Row­ley, which was leaked on so­cial me­dia un­known him, Le Hunte said his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the PM’s last in­struc­tions was to work with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) on de­vel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan to bring a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply to T&T with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time and move away from the de­pen­den­cy on de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter.

Le Hunte said that plan was com­plet­ed through a lot of hard work done by the IDB, min­istry and him­self, which led to a note be­ing laid be­fore Cab­i­net.

“Clear­ly, there ap­pears to be a con­flict in pol­i­cy that led to me be­ing asked to with­draw the note. I there­fore re­spect­ful­ly re­quest fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion be­fore ad­vis­ing the IDB,” the let­ter stat­ed.

He told the PM there were a num­ber of is­sues he “nei­ther com­pre­hend nor agree with. Yet I ful­ly un­der­stand the prin­ci­ple of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

Hav­ing wit­nessed the hard­ships the pop­u­la­tion has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing for wa­ter, Le Hunte told Row­ley the mat­ter was close to his heart.

“It is then left for me to con­clude that the in­struc­tions giv­en by you with­out ap­pro­pri­ate dis­cus­sion sug­gest a loss of con­fi­dence by you in me,” Le Hunte said in his let­ter.

Asked yes­ter­day about his lack of con­fi­dence claim to the PM, Le Hunte said that was the po­si­tion he took.

De­spite fac­ing blows from the pub­lic for WASA’s un­re­li­able ser­vice, Le Hunte said and the au­thor­i­ty’s man­age­ment team worked tire­less­ly to im­prove its wa­ter sup­ply by rolling out sev­er­al mea­sures.

As for the fu­ture of WASA, Le Hunte said it “all de­pends on the Prime Min­is­ter what he does and what is the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion.”

Pressed on what hap­pened in Cab­i­net last Thurs­day, Le Hunte re­fused to re­spond to spec­u­la­tive re­ports. 

“If peo­ple choose to leak in­for­ma­tion as to what hap­pened in Cab­i­net, that is their pre­rog­a­tive. I can’t stand in their shoes...I can on­ly stand in mine.

“My pro­fes­sion­al in­tegri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not al­low me to do things like that. I will not go down that road. I will not breach that con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. That will go against my in­tegri­ty.”

Since his ap­point­ment in 2017, Le Hunte said he has nev­er breached Cab­i­net’s trust.

“I can’t be like that. I have nev­er done it and will nev­er do it even when it is ben­e­fi­cial to me,” he said, adding we should all be held to high­er stan­dards.

Le Hunte said any­one can ask his for­mer em­ploy­ers about his work ethics and his goal for WASA.

“I was very pas­sion­ate about pro­vid­ing wa­ter to the peo­ple in spite of con­straints un­der which I worked. But I am not go­ing to tell you whether or not that was the con­ver­sa­tion (at Cab­i­net).” 

He al­so re­fused to say if there was a clash among Cab­i­net mem­bers over the rec­om­men­da­tions from the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery com­mit­tee, of which he was a vice-chair­man.

Al­though he is no longer on the com­mit­tee, Le Hunte said he will still as­sist in what­ev­er way he can.

“I am con­fi­dent that the mem­bers, who are all pro­fes­sion­als, will con­tin­ue to do their work and de­liv­er to the Prime Min­is­ter the fi­nal re­port next month. This is just a lit­tle bump in the road.” 

Le Hunte al­so re­fused to say if there was dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter’s han­dling of the Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny fu­el sale to Aru­ba that may have ex­posed the coun­try to US sanc­tions.

Asked if he was an­tag­o­nised or at­tacked by his Cab­i­net col­leagues, Le Hunte said he has al­ways main­tained a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship with them.

“From my per­spec­tive, I do not have any an­i­mos­i­ty to any col­league that I worked with. I had no con­flict with any­one. I dealt with all my col­leagues up­front. I treat­ed peo­ple with re­spect,” he said.

He al­so does not be­lieve stay­ing on PNM vice-chair­man would put him in an awk­ward po­si­tion and trig­ger ten­sions with­in the par­ty, not­ing he has served the par­ty in dif­fer­ent ca­pac­i­ties for 31 years.

As for his next move, Le Hunte said there are op­tions but it was too ear­ly to tell.

From yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Le Hunte said he would spend some time with his wife, who has been his pil­lar of strength.

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