Gail Alexan­der

Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion Min­is­ter Rodger Samuel has con­firmed that a young man, al­leged­ly at the cen­tre of im­prop­er sex­u­al claims in­volv­ing a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, came to con­fide in him last week Tues­day.Samuel spoke to T&T Guardian on the is­sue yes­ter­day fol­low­ing re­ports that the man had spo­ken out about the al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.The man has made sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment com­plaints and re­port­ed­ly al­so had spo­ken to po­lice.

Samuel said: "I can't go in­to de­tails as it's a le­gal mat­ter. The on­ly thing I can say is that the young man did come to see me in my ca­pac­i­ty as a pas­tor since last week Tues­day."He re­quest­ed that I speak to him in that ca­pac­i­ty but it is con­fi­den­tial."Samuel, a pas­tor for 20 years, said he prayed with the young man as he nor­mal­ly would with any­one who came to him.Asked if he knew the man, Samuel said he did not. He said the man was not a mem­ber of his con­gre­ga­tion from Ari­ma.

He added: "I am not sure how he man­aged to come to see me but a lot of peo­ple do."But I can­not re­veal what we spoke about. Al­so, as a min­is­ter of gospel, it's im­por­tant for one to hear both sides of the sto­ry, ob­vi­ous­ly."Asked if he had com­mu­ni­cat­ed the sit­u­a­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter, Samuel said he could not com­ment.Samuel said he had not been in­ter­viewed by any law en­force­ment agency.

"I am not sure if that will ever hap­pen but I re­spect the sit­u­a­tion so I can­not com­ment on any­thing per­tain­ing to it,"Mean­while, yes­ter­day Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said he had no idea which gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, if any, might be in­volved in a sex­u­al ha­rass­ment com­plaint.Bharath was re­spond­ing to ques­tions fol­low­ing a news­pa­per re­port yes­ter­day on the al­leged com­plaint.

The per­son claimed sit­u­a­tions oc­curred last year and in Jan­u­ary al­leged­ly at the home of the of­fi­cial which the per­son had gone to. The man in ques­tion is re­port­ed to have spo­ken to po­lice and was sched­uled to give a state­ment last Wednes­day.Bharath said: "If it is a po­lice mat­ter, it's in the po­lice's hands to de­ter­mine whether there is any va­lid­i­ty to this al­le­ga­tion."

Mean­while, To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Del­mon Bak­er who has said he had re­port­ed an ex­tor­tion at­tempt to the po­lice in Trinidad last Mon­day, did not an­swer calls on the is­sue.His at­tor­ney Christlyn Moore said she and an­oth­er at­tor­ney were act­ing for Bak­er in a mat­ter in which he "was the vic­tim of at­tempt­ed ex­tor­tion. I can't com­ment on any­thing else."

Bak­er's ad­vis­er Stan­ley Beard who last week al­leged there was an ex­tor­tion move afoot against Bak­er had al­lud­ed to a per­son who had worked in the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion for the Peo­ple of­fice.Yes­ter­day Beard de­clined com­ment on the is­sue say­ing: "Let the court deal with this."