Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

For­mer chief sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act makes it il­le­gal for one di­vi­sion to have two sec­re­taries, as con­fu­sion mounts over who is re­al­ly in charge of tourism on the is­land.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Den­nis said, “Fol­low­ing the is­suance of a press re­lease by the Chief Sec­re­tary, which told us that Zor­isha Hack­ett was tem­porar­i­ly as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion, there were two very con­fus­ing de­vel­op­ments.

“First­ly, Tashia Bur­ris told us that she is still the Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion, and sec­ond­ly, Zor­isha Hack­ett told us that she is the Sec­re­tary with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties. Both state­ments con­tra­dict­ed the chief sec­re­tary’s ini­tial press re­lease, and now we have more con­fu­sion.”

Hack­ett, who is al­so Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary, was ap­point­ed sec­re­tary of the di­vi­sion on Sep­tem­ber 15 af­ter Bur­ris went on ap­proved leave.

There was no of­fi­cial no­tice of Bur­ris’ re­turn, which caused some con­fu­sion when she at­tend­ed last Thurs­day’s ple­nary sit­ting to an­swer ques­tions di­rect­ed to the tourism sec­re­tary.

Den­nis said Sec­tion 37 of the THA Act is clear.

“Each di­vi­sion of the THA should have one sec­re­tary with clear and un­di­vid­ed au­thor­i­ty … There­fore, a di­vi­sion can­not legal­ly have two sec­re­taries as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it.”

He de­scribed the cur­rent arrange­ment as “mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion and child’s play” in one of To­ba­go’s most crit­i­cal di­vi­sions and called on Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to clar­i­fy “ur­gent­ly and pub­licly in the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance, de­cen­cy, and or­der”.

But Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett de­fend­ed the arrange­ment dur­ing a Car­ni­val press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, say­ing her ap­point­ment was meant to strength­en the di­vi­sion dur­ing Bur­ris’ leave and work with her and the as­sis­tant sec­re­tary ahead of the Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val and Blue Food Fes­ti­val.

“In the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, we’re just ap­point­ed sec­re­taries. And so the Chief Sec­re­tary has all rights and au­thor­i­ty to move sec­re­taries across di­vi­sions as he sees fit. We had Sec­re­tary Bur­ris go­ing on some ap­proved leave last week or so. And in that time, I held the reins on her be­half. And what is hap­pen­ing now, as you would ap­pre­ci­ate, is that this year we re­al­ly have to get the car­ni­val right. And so it’s as­sis­tance,” Hack­ett said.

She main­tained that the arrange­ment was un­usu­al but to­tal­ly le­gal.

“You’re go­ing to have a sec­re­tary as­sist­ing a sec­re­tary in a di­vi­sion. And I think prob­a­bly there’s no prece­dence for it, but it’s ac­tu­al­ly le­gal; it’s au­tho­rised. You have one sec­re­tary who can hold two di­vi­sions, and you can have two sec­re­taries as­sist­ing in a di­vi­sion, es­pe­cial­ly a di­vi­sion as very di­verse as that one,” Hack­ett added.

Hack­ett said both she and Bur­ris had been man­dat­ed by the chief sec­re­tary to work with Tourism’s As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Niall George to en­sure the up­com­ing fes­ti­vals and To­ba­go’s des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing suc­ceed.