The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on Mon­day ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of "shut­ting down" Mon­day's Sen­ate Bud­get de­bate - but Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har has de­nied that.

A PNM state­ment said af­ter PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi spoke, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh "jumped in" to wind up the de­bate, deny­ing PNM's Dr Amery Browne and Fos­ter Cum­mings an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute.

The PNM, which stat­ed 10 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors didn't speak, de­tailed is­sues the Gov­er­mment failed to re­ply on - in­clud­ing Venezuela's can­cel­la­tion of the En­er­gy Frame­work Agree­ment with T&T.

The PNM said Gov­ern­ment failed to give crit­i­cal­ly need­ed ex­pla­na­tions on whether the oil and gas in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing the Man­a­tee field to be op­er­at­ed by Shell, would be prej­u­diced.

But Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate Leader Al­la­har said be­fore Swarats­ingh be­gan wind­ing up, he asked if any­one else wished to speak and no one got up. Al­la­har said the PNM was out­ma­noeu­vred and had ab­di­cat­ed their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the peo­ple.

"They were giv­en a fair chance and didn't take it," Al­la­har said. - Gail Alexan­der