Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will be in­vit­ed to at­tend Cab­i­net meet­ings when­ev­er is­sues re­lat­ed to To­ba­go arise.

It was one of sev­er­al mat­ters re­gard­ing To­ba­go she spoke about dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day.

When asked when she planned to vis­it the is­land af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice, tje Prime Min­is­ter said, “Soon, we are lit­tle busy at the mo­ment with the midterm re­view… but as soon as we can.

She said her Gov­ern­ment held a meet­ing with Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine and agreed to work to­geth­er on sev­er­al is­sues.

“There are many things we can work on to­wards re­solv­ing that may not cost tax­pay­er dol­lars, and there’s some what you call low-hang­ing fruit that we can deal with in a short-term pe­ri­od.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­firmed that a new au­ton­o­my bill will not come be­fore Par­lia­ment un­til lat­er this year.

“That may not be un­til the new par­lia­men­tary term, which is com­ing down in­to af­ter the bud­get—Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber. That will not be forth­com­ing.”

In the mean­time, she said small­er leg­isla­tive up­dates are be­ing worked on. Some will re­move de­lays caused by out­dat­ed ref­er­ences in na­tion­al laws that still re­quire Trinidad-based min­is­ters to ap­prove ac­tions in To­ba­go.

“We can amend the word ‘min­is­ter’ now to bring it in­to the mod­ern day post the THA Act.”

She said her ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to in­clud­ing the THA in all fu­ture de­ci­sion-mak­ing that af­fects To­ba­go.

“When­ev­er ma­jor To­ba­go is­sues are be­ing dis­cussed at Cab­i­net, the Chief Sec­re­tary will be in­vit­ed to at­tend to have his in­put be­fore de­ci­sions are tak­en.”

Le­gal af­fairs is an­oth­er area be­ing re­viewed. The Prime Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment is look­ing in­to restor­ing lo­cal ser­vices for res­i­dents who cur­rent­ly need to trav­el to Trinidad.

“We are con­sid­er­ing again putting a deputy Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al in To­ba­go for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

This comes af­ter there were sev­er­al is­sues with the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al ser­vices which se­vere­ly im­pact­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans in 2023 and again in 2024.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day said her Gov­ern­ment and the THA are al­so re­view­ing the un­fin­ished ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal—which is ex­pect­ed to go in­to op­er­a­tion in a month, as promised by for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. 

But, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “There were sev­er­al is­sues out­stand­ing there. I don’t want to go back in­to that, but a lot of things that are not right with where the con­struc­tion has reached. So we need an as­sess­ment re­port as to where it’s at, but yes, we are com­mit­ted to work­ing with the THA to get that air­port open ful­ly func­tion­al.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while the full au­ton­o­my bill will take more time, many small­er is­sues can be ad­dressed soon­er such as the “out­dat­ed” leg­is­la­tion af­fect­ing ba­sic func­tions such as teacher leave, where ap­proval still has to come from Trinidad.

“That was one that we felt we would look at—the de­f­i­n­i­tion of min­is­ter, and where that can be trans­posed in­to some­one there in the bu­reau­cra­cy in the THA that will al­low them faster time.

“They sound small, but it’s big for the peo­ple of To­ba­go that we can do with­out com­ing with this big om­nibus book bill at the end of this year.”

To ad­dress these le­gal mat­ters, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “The Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as well as Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, [De­vesh] Ma­haraj, will be tasked with han­dling all leg­isla­tive mat­ters re­lat­ing to To­ba­go.”

She al­so pledged to re­store the lev­el of ac­cess to pub­lic records and le­gal doc­u­ments that pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ed be­tween 2010 and 2015.