Leader of the House Bar­ry Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment was pro­tect­ing tax­pay­ers when it re­frained from an­swer­ing Op­po­si­tion ques­tions about the dis­missal of se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Filed as an ur­gent ques­tion last Fri­day, the Op­po­si­tion asked the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Utilites: “In light of the con­fir­ma­tion by the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers of Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) of the im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of the nine ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of WASA, can the Min­is­ter in­di­cate the rea­sons for the ter­mi­na­tion.”

How­ev­er, Padarath raised stand­ing or­der 27 (1) (G) which re­lates to the abil­i­ty of a min­is­ter to de­cline to an­swer a ques­tion if, in their opin­ion, the pub­li­ca­tion of the an­swer would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

They can in­voke this Stand­ing Or­der as a rea­son not to pro­vide a di­rect an­swer, as­sert­ing that do­ing so would be detri­men­tal to the pub­lic in­ter­est. It’s a pro­vi­sion that al­lows the gov­ern­ment some dis­cre­tion in with­hold­ing in­for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly on sen­si­tive mat­ters.

Asked yes­ter­day why that was done, Padarath said it was to pro­tect the cit­i­zens.

“There’s le­gal re­course in this coun­try on any mat­ter that is a frame­work in which we op­er­ate and the law of the land al­lows per­sons whether it’s In­dus­tri­al Court, High Court, any court to seek re­dress.

“How­ev­er, as the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, we must pro­tect the tax­pay­er and not prej­u­dice any le­gal mat­ters,” Padarath ex­plained.

He de­nied that the gov­ern­ment was hid­ing from ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“If we were hid­ing we wouldn’t be here this morn­ing an­swer­ing your ques­tions.

“The Gov­ern­ment, this Gov­ern­ment, is not in hid­ing and I want Trinidad and To­ba­go and I think the coun­try it­self ac­knowl­edges that the Prime Min­is­ter from time to time will come to the Post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, stand up for two or three hours and take ques­tions from the me­dia,” he said.

“I think some of them for­got in the me­dia when Colm Im­bert blocked them on so­cial me­dia when he blocked them on X which was for­mer­ly Twit­ter. So, this gov­ern­ment is trans­par­ent but ob­vi­ous­ly, we al­so have to en­sure that we do not prej­u­dice any le­gal mat­ters that may come and there­fore we in­voked sec­tion 27 (1) (G) in the in­ter­est of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic’s purse and the tax­pay­er.”

This same stand­ing or­der was used to avoid an­swer­ing a sim­i­lar ques­tion put to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ask­ing why for­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hillaire was sud­den­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.