How could Tra­cy David­son Ce­les­tine, the woman who could very well be the next Chief Sec­re­tary not un­der­stand that as a sec­re­tary your ac­count­abil­i­ty does not end when you en­sure funds are pro­vid­ed for a project? How can she not see that as sec­re­tary you are ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for what hap­pens in your di­vi­sion in­clud­ing failed projects and wastage of tax­pay­ers funds?

From the on­set, let me say that I once worked at the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and I have had cause on many oc­ca­sions to in­ter­act with Mrs David­son-Ce­les­tine.

For sure she is a very pleas­ant per­son, of­ten gen­er­ous and in many ways easy to work with. But that is be­side the point.

Like many in the coun­try, I was aghast and some­what flum­moxed by David­son-Ce­les­tine’s at­tempt to re­move any cul­pa­bil­i­ty from her­self as se­ri­ous ques­tions were raised by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port.

She told sup­port­ers in Canaan: “As I know it, a sec­re­tary’s role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is that of pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion and it is through the process there will be pol­i­cy and pro­grammes and we find when the mem­bers of staff would come with pro­grammes and pro­pos­als, we will go through the process to en­sure that the fund­ing is avail­able for the mem­ber of staff to im­ple­ment the project.”

On No­vem­ber 12 last year, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment wrote a let­ter to the THA’s Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor on the find­ings of the au­dit. On page 15 of the let­ter, the is­sues sur­round­ing the pro­posed course at the Main Ridge in To­ba­go were high­light­ed.

“A ser­vice agree­ment dat­ed June 12, 2015 showed that the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion con­tract­ed with a British Vir­gin Is­land cor­po­ra­tion lo­cat­ed at Tor­to­la to de­sign, de­vel­op and con­struct a “High An­gle” Canopy Tour Course in the Main Ridge at an ini­tial cost of US$531,610,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al not­ed, how­ev­er, that no ap­proval was pre­sent­ed from the THA’s ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil for the es­tab­lish­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty.

A to­tal of $2,511,210.20 was paid by the THA for “ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment; how­ev­er the ex­is­tence of these as­sets was not ver­i­fied...a vis­it to the stores sec­tion of the di­vi­sion re­vealed on­ly some ropes on hand,” the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al said.

This is a se­ri­ous mat­ter. The least it points to is project fail­ure and David­son-Ce­les­tine as Sec­re­tary of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion at the time can­not ex­tri­cate her­self from re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Her not-so-veiled at­tempt to play the vic­tim role and to sug­gest to To­bag­o­ni­ans that such mat­ters should not be made an is­sue be­cause they don’t do it in Trinidad is both pel­lu­cid­ly false and an at­tempt to play the To­ba­go vs Trinidad card.

“I have read au­dit­ed re­ports from min­istries in Trinidad, no politi­cian was blamed for it, no mem­ber of staff in any di­vi­sion was blamed for it…all they ac­knowl­edge was with­in the func­tions of gov­ern­ment there are sys­tem­at­ic chal­lenges at the end of the day and in or­der to progress and to move for­ward, we have to en­sure we are able to ad­dress those sys­tem­at­ic re­ports. But when you look and as­sess the sit­u­a­tion in the con­text of To­ba­go and in the con­text of T&T, it is on­ly in To­ba­go that the Op­po­si­tion tries to take these re­ports and link any politi­cian and mem­ber of staff to any un­to­ward process­es in a di­vi­sion,” she ex­plained.

David­son-Ce­les­tine added: “All they are do­ing is call­ing na­tion­al at­ten­tion, call­ing in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to the fact that pub­lic ser­vants do not yet know how to doc­u­ment their work prop­er­ly.

But, more than that, they are be­hav­ing as though our pub­lic ser­vants in the THA are the worst in T&T and the worst in the rest of the Caribbean.”

How could we have con­fi­dence that el­e­vat­ing Mrs David­son-Ce­les­tine to the po­si­tion of Chief Sec­re­tary will see some­one pay­ing clos­er at­ten­tion to the gov­er­nance struc­ture of the THA and pro­tect­ing the bil­lions that To­ba­go gets every year from Trinidad.

The av­er­age To­bag­on­ian gets from the Gov­ern­ment sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides per capi­ta for Trinida­di­ans. In the last bud­get for ex­am­ple, the spend in To­ba­go was $2.3 bil­lion plus the pro­vi­sion of oth­er ser­vices, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, in­ter is­land fer­ry, port, salaries for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, air­port ser­vices etc. Well over $3 bil­lion. That is an av­er­age of $50,000 per To­bag­on­ian.

Com­pare that to Trinidad with its 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple and the fig­ure works out to $36,100. This is in a sit­u­a­tion where To­ba­go’s tax take is lit­tle to noth­ing.

It is why David­son-Ce­les­tine’s at­tempt to play the To­ba­go vs Trinidad card is so of­fen­sive.

That the Prime Min­is­ter, who in his ear­ly days prid­ed him­self as the cor­rup­tion buster and like David­son-Ce­les­tine claims there has been no cor­rup­tion un­der his watch has re­mained qui­et while this con­tro­ver­sy swirled, is telling, if not sur­pris­ing.

As I have said be­fore, To­ba­go has been able to get what it wants and do what it wants be­cause of the bar­gain­ing pow­er of the two To­ba­go seats.

To its cred­it the is­land has been pre­pared to change po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance when­ev­er it does not get what it wants and in a close­ly di­vid­ed coun­try the rul­ing PNM des­per­ate­ly needs it to hold on­to pow­er. This has led to a pre­pared­ness to turn a blind eye to any in­frac­tion and to ex­cuse it away as the chal­lenges of sep­a­ra­tion by wa­ter and un­der-de­vel­op­ment.

I won­der if the PM’s re­sponse, or lack of, would have been the same had sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions been made against the Rio Claro/Ma­yaro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion or the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion?

The fo­cus may have been on the $2 mil­lion for rope but the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port is filled with oth­er short­com­ings of the THA.

With the bill ex­pect­ed to soon come be­fore the Par­lia­ment for in­ter­nal self gov­ern­ment for the is­land, it will be in­ter­est­ing to see if it can be passed with­out sig­nif­i­cant checks and bal­ances to pro­tect tax­pay­ers mon­ey, or at least en­sure that the tax­es paid by the peo­ple and com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro area are not frit­tered away on zi­pline projects that leave us hold­ing rope.