Sto­ries by

SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

By the end of the week, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will de­cide on whether po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Dr Win­ford James, will re­main on the board of the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said on Mon­day.

Dur­ing an Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, Au­gus­tine was asked whether he had been told of crit­i­cisms of Dr James’ ap­point­ment as deputy chair­man of the board.

Some crit­ics have ques­tioned the ap­point­ment as James’ broth­er, Trevor James, heads the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment. Last Fri­day, how­ev­er, Dr James told Guardian Me­dia he saw no con­flict of in­ter­est in his ap­point­ment.

But Au­gus­tine said yes­ter­day that al­though Dr James is well qual­i­fied for the po­si­tion, per­ceived con­flict of in­ter­est was just as risky as ac­tu­al con­flict.

“One of the things we promised to do is to lis­ten, even to your crit­i­cisms and to cor­rect the things that you point out might be wrong. And though Dr James is ex­treme­ly well qual­i­fied, we have not­ed the con­cerns brought by a lot of peo­ple. So as a team, as an ex­ec­u­tive, we are re­view­ing the mat­ter,” Au­gus­tine said.

How­ev­er, he al­so high­light­ed the rea­sons for the ap­point­ment.

“Dr James has to be cred­it­ed for the mod­ern de­vel­op­ment of the Mount Pleas­ant Cred­it Union and in fact, where the cur­rent Mount Pleas­ant Cred­it Union is. In fact, he has chaired there, has mar­shalled that cred­it union in­to tremen­dous suc­cess,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the cred­it union has al­ways been one of the most note­wor­thy cred­it unions na­tion­al­ly but Dr James has been able to bring im­mense busi­ness suc­cess to it.

“And giv­en that SPEL, which is Stud­ley Park En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed, needs that suc­cess­ful turnover, it was felt that some­one with the ex­pe­ri­ence of Dr James will do well there.”

He said James’ man­age­ment role at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies was al­so con­sid­ered.

“So the ques­tion of whether he is a good fit or not re­al­ly does not ob­tain,” the Chief Sec­re­tary added.

Au­gus­tine said Sec­re­tary James had in­formed him he was re­view­ing the mat­ter and promised a de­ci­sion by the end of the week.

But he made a point of not­ing this re­view was not linked to Dr James’ com­pe­ten­cy for the post, adding Dr James’ had served on boards in To­ba­go un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I want you to note, how­ev­er, that the re­view is based on the re­spons­es we have got­ten from you, mem­bers of the pub­lic and has noth­ing to do with the il­lu­mi­nat­ed qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences of Dr James him­self. Be­cause he is and he cer­tain­ly has quite a lot to of­fer,” Au­gus­tine said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Dr James, who said he had not heard the an­nounce­ment as he was in meet­ings through­out the day.

When briefed on what Au­gus­tine had said, Dr James said he would abide by any de­ci­sion the As­sem­bly reach­es.

“It is the po­lit­i­cal thing to do, the Chief Sec­re­tary and the deputy leader of PDP must lis­ten to the pub­lic and the de­ci­sion is theirs, the ex­ec­u­tive are the ones who de­cid­ed I should be there, it’s not just my broth­er,” Dr James said.

He said he will re­spect any de­ci­sion the As­sem­bly takes but added if he is re­moved, it may set a bad prece­dent in To­ba­go.

“It means that you will have to check every back­ground and if you sniff and smell fam­i­ly, I don’t know what they will de­cide this week and I will re­spect it but then they might de­cide they are not go­ing to ac­com­mo­date any­one who is a fam­i­ly mem­ber of a sit­ting sec­re­tary,” he said.