Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has every right to de­fend his in­ter­na­tion­al trav­els in the face of crit­i­cism by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

In fact, Dr Row­ley's po­si­tion that he is the least trav­elled Cari­com leader is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to his ab­sence at some of the more high-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings, such as this week's 79th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions that be­gan in New York yes­ter­day.

T&T is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, who is one of the bet­ter-per­form­ing min­is­ters.

He prop­er­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed T&T's po­si­tion on how the trade in small arms af­fects our coun­try at the UN's Sum­mit of the Fu­ture on Mon­day.

But as PM, Dr Row­ley is the top diplo­mat and his pres­ence at these meet­ings not on­ly sends a clear mes­sage that T&T takes its glob­al af­fairs se­ri­ous­ly, but al­so en­sures that we are speak­ing with our strongest voice at bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions that take place at the side­lines of these meet­ings.

Be­ing among Cari­com's biggest economies, his pres­ence would have al­so helped present the body as a strong re­gion­al unit that is pre­pared to make key de­ci­sions when called up­on to do so.

Ar­guably, Dr Row­ley does not need to be at these meet­ings to en­sure T&T en­gages in prof­itable ne­go­ti­a­tions.

How­ev­er, when one con­sid­ers that this is the largest gath­er­ing of world lead­ers since the start of the Is­rael-Gaza con­flict; that it is Pres­i­dent Joe Biden's last UN meet­ing; and that this year pos­es se­ri­ous threats to world economies through ris­ing glob­al debt and sci­en­tif­ic pre­dic­tions that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, T&T has much to gain from a strong lead­er­ship pres­ence to help agen­das that are in our in­ter­est.

These are trav­el sched­ules that Dr Row­ley can­not be fault­ed for had he been do­ing more of them.

But where Dr Row­ley tends to blur the lines is in his trav­els which re­sult in lit­tle or no ac­count­abil­i­ty to the pop­u­la­tion.

His re­cent trip to the US for a health check-up was cov­ered in com­plete se­cre­cy.

Apart from telling the coun­try that he was leav­ing, at no point did Dr Row­ley or his of­fice seek to com­mu­ni­cate to the pop­u­la­tion about his where­abouts or his even­tu­al re­turn.

Dr Row­ley's on­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion while abroad was on his Face­book page to cel­e­brate win­ning a defama­tion case against Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, and lat­er, to crit­i­cise Dr Mooni­lal for in­ac­cu­rate state­ments he made on an­oth­er mat­ter.

At the end of his near two-week trip, his of­fice sent a blunt me­dia re­lease to state that he was back.

To date, we are yet to be told about his health.

If the Prime Min­is­ter be­lieves that his health is on­ly of in­ter­est to him and not his coun­try, then he is wrong.

As the leader of the coun­try and Gov­ern­ment, the pub­lic has every right to know whether he is fit enough to con­tin­ue on in the role and whether he has any ma­jor health ail­ments.

Con­trary to the Op­po­si­tion leader's view, the PM's trav­el­ling is not the re­al prob­lem but the pri­or­i­ties and ac­count­abil­i­ty re­lat­ed to them are.