Richard?Lord

Sacked hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc Don­ald is set to make a re­turn when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley makes a ma­jor Cab­i­net reshuf­fle short­ly, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands.

As the first an­niver­sary of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry is ob­served to­day, sources yes­ter­day con­firmed Mc Don­ald is tipped to re­turn to the Cab­i­net.

Spec­u­la­tion was rife that Mc Don­ald's ex­pe­ri­ence was be­ing used when she ap­peared as the on­ly non-Cab­i­net min­is­ter on Gov­ern­ment's high-pro­file team, led by Row­ley, dur­ing last week's crime meet­ing with the Op­po­si­tion.

She was al­so at the sub­se­quent news con­fer­ence held by the PM to de­tail the out­come of the meet­ing.

At least four min­is­ters are ex­pect­ed to be af­fect­ed by the im­mi­nent reshuf­fle, a source said.

The T&T Guardian was told Row­ley was "ob­vi­ous­ly not hap­py" with the per­for­mance of some of his min­is­ters and would be look­ing to en­sure there were im­prove­ments in the com­ing year.

The source said Gov­ern­ment would ef­fec­tive­ly on­ly have three years to en­sure it was ready to seek re-elec­tion be­fore the fi­nal year be­gins, and Row­ley is keen to boost his par­ty's per­for­mance, es­pe­cial­ly in the face of neg­a­tive sur­vey re­sults and rat­ings on its first year in of­fice from var­i­ous sec­tors of the pub­lic.

"The Prime Min­is­ter is clear­ly not hap­py about the way some of his min­is­ters have per­formed over the first year and would be seek­ing to make the re­quired changes to en­sure more ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery on the up­com­ing years," the source in­sist­ed.

There is spec­u­la­tion that Mc Don­ald my be giv­en the Min­istry of Works port­fo­lio, as sources said she was a good hous­ing min­is­ter.

Sources al­so said the prospect of Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny chair­man Ger­ry Brooks join­ing the Cab­i­net could be­come a re­al­i­ty.

Changes were al­so like­ly in the Min­istries of Health and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions held by Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and for­mer news­pa­per ed­i­tor Max­ie Cuffie re­spec­tive­ly. But they ad­mit­ted the ap­point­ment could al­so de­pend on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion clear­ing Mc Don­ald fol­low­ing its cur­rent probe of al­le­ga­tions against her.

Dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view on Sun­day, Row­ley had ex­pressed his frus­tra­tion at the length of time the in­tegri­ty body was tak­ing to probe a com­plaint by Fix­in' T&T that Mc Don­ald al­leged­ly breached par­lia­men­tary rules when she hired her com­mon-law spouse and his broth­er to work in her con­stituen­cy of­fice dur­ing the tenth par­lia­men­tary term at salaries above $10,000 each.

Par­lia­ment pays the ex­pens­es of con­stituen­cy of­fices and its rules for­bid the hir­ing of rel­a­tives.

Row­ley said: "In the spir­it of in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life, when al­le­ga­tions are made against pub­lic of­fi­cials, es­pe­cial­ly par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion must act ex­pe­di­tious­ly to deal with those in­ves­ti­ga­tions, de­ter­mine whether there's a case to an­swer or whether the per­son's name should be cleared and the per­son con­tin­ue with­out a cloud. But those in­ves­ti­ga­tions are drag­ging on too long."

The com­mis­sion has since de­fend­ed it­self, say­ing the PM's claim was un­fair and he had no de­tails to sup­port his claim.

Gov­ern­ment sources said yes­ter­day the in­volve­ment of Mc Don­ald in the Gov­ern­ment/Op­po­si­tion crime talks and Row­ley's com­ment on the probe were all in­di­ca­tions of his de­sire to have her re­turn to the Cab­i­net.

Calls to Mc Don­ald's phone went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

Mc Don­ald's his­to­ry

Mc Don­ald was first elect­ed MP for Port-of-Spain South on No­vem­ber 5, 2007, un­der then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, and was ap­point­ed com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, cul­ture and gen­der af­fairs min­is­ter. She re­tained her seat three years lat­er af­ter Man­ning's PNM lost a snap elec­tion on May 24, 2010.

Af­ter Row­ley was ap­point­ed new PNM leader and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, he ap­point­ed Mc Don­ald to serve as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and Chief Whip. She was re-elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015 af­ter the PNM was re­turned to pow­er un­der Row­ley.

Four days lat­er she was ap­point­ed min­is­ter of hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment, a po­si­tion she held un­til March 17, 2016, when she was re­moved from the Cab­i­net. She, how­ev­er, re­tained her par­ty po­si­tion.