Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will chair a new­ly-ap­point­ed stand­ing com­mit­tee on en­er­gy which will in­clude as mem­bers for­mer Petrotrin ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Mal­colm Jones and en­er­gy ex­pert and for­mer UTT chair­man, Prof. Ken Julien.

This was dis­closed by Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.

Cuffie al­so said he would con­tin­ue to be the on­ly min­is­ter ad­dress­ing the news con­fer­ence and it would be main­ly on the de­ci­sions and dis­cus­sions in the Cab­i­net meet­ing.

He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the new for­mat of the event, which dif­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly for the one used by the for­mer PP gov­ern­ment where min­sters ap­peared to an­swer ques­tions about their re­spec­tive port­fo­lios.

Cuffie was asked about pub­lic crit­i­cisms from the UNC about Jones' and Julien's re­spec­tive tenures.

Cuffie said the Gov­ern­ment was not un­du­ly con­cerned about those crit­i­cisms as both men were not charged with any of­fence.

He said the le­gal mat­ter against Julien "ex­plod­ed in the High Court and was dis­missed with an apol­o­gy from the (then) at­tor­ney gen­er­al."

He said the le­gal mat­ters against Jones "are (al­so) head­ing in that di­rec­tion but in any case they have not been charged with any­thing and they are up­right cit­i­zens and free to serve in that ca­pac­i­ty."

He said Jones and Julien "have tremen­dous years ex­pe­ri­ence in en­er­gy mat­ters and I think the coun­try recog­nis­es their worth."

Oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee are Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter An­cil An­toine, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Franklin Khan, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don, Petrotrin chair­man An­drew Jupiter, NGC chair­man Ger­ry Brooks, T&TEC chair­man Kei­th Sir­ju and in­dus­tri­al en­gi­neer Steve Gard­ner.

Cuffie al­so said the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries in the Fi­nance and En­er­gy Min­istries and two tech­ni­cal ad­vis­ers from the En­er­gy Min­istry would al­so be mem­bers.

He said that com­mit­tee's ob­jec­tives were to en­sure there was max­i­mum ben­e­fit to this coun­try from in­vest­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Cuffie al­so an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of a stand­ing com­mit­tee on phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, al­so to be chaired by Row­ley and in­clude as mem­bers, the Fi­nance, Works, Plan­ning, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, Agri­cul­ture and Hous­ing Min­is­ters. The Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA is al­so a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee.

That com­mit­tee, he said, would look at the es­tab­lish­ment of the mass tran­sit sys­tem, con­struc­tion of high­ways, con­struc­tion of a fast fer­ry port in To­co and the con­struc­tion of a mod­ern fish­ing port in Moru­ga and oth­er mat­ters.

Oth­er Cab­i­net de­ci­sion tak­en yes­ter­day

Ap­proval of $5 mil­lion to as­sist Do­mini­ca fol­low­ing last month's dam­age caused by trop­i­cal storm Eri­ka. Cuffie said the mon­ey is to be used "to sup­ply con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al to Do­mini­ca.