SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­rent­ly has no am­bas­sador post­ed to Wash­ing­ton, DC, Venezuela or Chi­na.

The coun­try al­so does not have any high com­mis­sion­er post­ed to Lon­don.

This ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, who ap­peared be­fore the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment on Oc­to­ber 24.

Sobers was asked by Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West MP Stu­art Young about the for­eign post­ings.

Young al­so asked about post­ings to In­dia and South Africa. Sobers said there was a high com­mis­sion­er ap­point­ed to In­dia and an of­fi­cer await­ing ac­cred­i­ta­tion for a post­ing to South Africa.

"Min­is­ter you would ac­cept that these are im­por­tant ar­eas for us to put per­sons in posts be­cause it would as­sist you and the gov­ern­ment great­ly in car­ry­ing out the work that Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to get done with these sov­er­eign coun­tries, yes?" Young asked.

In re­sponse, Sobers ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance and added, "If you would al­low me and re­call my orig­i­nal an­swer to your ques­tion, all of these post­ings and con­sul gen­er­al post­ings are of ex­treme im­por­tance to this ad­min­is­tra­tion, and yes, it may very well as­sist the ad­min­is­tra­tion in hav­ing per­sons at posts, but since en­ter­ing of­fice in 2025, I have been giv­en the man­date to per­son­al­ly (man­age the re­la­tion­ships) and I've been do­ing so, I would want to say, quite well."

Op­po­si­tion leader and MP for Ari­ma Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ques­tioned a $25.6 mil­lion in­crease in salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowances.

Sobers said that in­crease cov­ers the 40 per cent cash pay­ment for pub­lic ser­vants in the Min­istry for the pe­ri­od 2013 to 2019 and rec­om­men­da­tions for in­creas­es made by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion for five peo­ple in var­i­ous posts.

Sobers al­so said the min­istry has al­lo­cat­ed mon­ey to­wards es­tab­lish­ing an em­bassy in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

He said the min­istry hired three sport­ing and cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors in 2026, with a month­ly salary of $21,000 each.

Those am­bas­sadors are Ke­iron Pol­lard, Nicholas Pooran and Dwayne Bra­vo.

Sobers said the min­istry has al­lo­cat­ed mon­ey in 2027 to hire two more sport­ing and cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors.

Ques­tioned by Young about a $5 mil­lion in­crease for ve­hi­cle pro­cure­ment, Sobers said the mon­ey will be used to pur­chase new ve­hi­cles to trans­port for­eign dig­ni­taries who want to vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said the Min­istry is re­ceiv­ing more re­quests from for­eign diplo­mats who want to vis­it the coun­try.