As Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, one of the most se­ri­ous and all-en­com­pass­ing is­sues that Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed from its pre­de­ces­sor is the long-stand­ing dif­fi­cul­ty the prover­bial man in the street faces in ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change at the es­tab­lished ex­change rate.

This is­sue is of such im­por­tance to T&T's re­cent­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter, that on May 15, at the sec­ond news con­fer­ence of her sec­ond term, she man­dat­ed three of her min­is­ters, who hold the port­fo­lios of fi­nance, trade, in­vest­ment and tourism as well as plan­ning, eco­nom­ic af­fairs and de­vel­op­ment to pro­duce a re­port on for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion and leak­age over the past 10 years.

And then last week, in re­sponse to a ques­tion on when the pop­u­la­tion can ex­pect the for­eign ex­change re­port, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar went pub­lic with a com­plaint that the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, was re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion.

She said Dr Hi­laire and the Cen­tral Bank were "us­ing cer­tain pro­vi­sions of the law, say­ing they don't have a du­ty and that they are not un­der any oblig­a­tion to dis­close in­for­ma­tion."

As T&T's old­est news­pa­per, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian ful­ly en­dors­es the pub­lic's right to know and the con­cept that it is on­ly an in­formed pop­u­la­tion that can hold those in pow­er to ac­count.

While this coun­try's 1976 Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion does not di­rect­ly ad­dress the is­sue of the pub­lic's right to know, it does en­shrine as one of the fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights that T&T cit­i­zens en­joy, a close al­ly in the free­dom of the press.

T&T's Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) came in­to force Au­gust 2001, out­lin­ing that "it shall be the right of every per­son to ob­tain ac­cess to an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment."

But the Cen­tral Bank is ex­empt from the ap­pli­ca­tion of the FOIA.

And the Cen­tral Bank Act, at sec­tion 56, man­dates that "every di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer and em­ploy­ee of the Bank shall pre­serve and aid in pre­serv­ing se­cre­cy with re­gard to all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the af­fairs of the Bank, any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion or per­son reg­is­tered un­der the In­sur­ance Act or of any cus­tomers there­of..."

The on­ly ex­cep­tion to lo­cal cen­tral bankers pre­serv­ing se­cre­cy is "in so far as may be nec­es­sary for the due per­for­mance of its ob­jects."

The Act al­so stip­u­lates that "no di­rec­tor, of­fi­cer or em­ploy­ee of the Bank shall be re­quired to pro­duce in any Court any book or doc­u­ment or to di­vulge or com­mu­ni­cate to any Court any mat­ter or thing com­ing un­der his no­tice in the per­for­mance of his du­ties un­der this Act..."

So in chastis­ing Gov­er­nor Hi­laire for not di­vulging for­eign ex­change in­for­ma­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is en­cour­ag­ing the cen­tral banker to break the law, for which he may be li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $6,000 and to im­pris­on­ment for two years.

Al­so, the gov­er­nor could not have for­got­ten that he was el­e­vat­ed to his cur­rent po­si­tion as a re­sult of the ter­mi­na­tion of his pre­de­ces­sor, Jwala Ram­bar­ran, on Christ­mas Eve 2015. One of the rea­sons for Mr Ram­bar­ran's ter­mi­na­tion, which was based on the rec­om­men­da­tion of for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, was for pro­vid­ing a list of the top users of for­eign ex­change at pub­lic meet­ing.

If for this rea­son alone, the Prime Min­is­ter should not ex­pect her re­quest for dis­clo­sure by the Cen­tral Bank of com­pa­ny-spe­cif­ic for­eign ex­change in­for­ma­tion to be met.