De­spite Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s un­prece­dent­ed de­ci­sion to ap­point three min­is­ters to the Min­istry of Hous­ing, po­lit­i­cal ex­perts say it is with­in her man­date to or­gan­ise her Gov­ern­ment as she sees fit.

On Wednes­day, Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der, founder of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty, was sworn in as a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing. He will serve along­side Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr David Lee and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Anil Roberts.

Speak­ing on the move to have three min­is­ters in one min­istry, for­mer min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde — who served un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2007 to 2010 — not­ed that any­one in a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty has the right to as­sem­ble their team. How­ev­er, she cau­tioned that such de­ci­sions come with re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of eval­u­at­ing the out­comes of this re­con­fig­u­ra­tion with­in the min­istry.

“If you put three peo­ple in a min­istry, then clear­ly, there is an agen­da, cer­tain­ly, to change the de­liv­ery of hous­es, to a lev­el that has not been seen be­fore. That cer­tain­ly may be the in­ten­tion, and so with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and the au­thor­i­ty comes ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Dick-Forde said.

Draw­ing from her own ex­pe­ri­ence, she said hav­ing a deputy was nec­es­sary in min­istries with sev­er­al op­er­a­tional arms. Dick-Forde not­ed that a wise min­is­ter would del­e­gate spe­cif­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to a min­is­ter in the min­istry, point­ing out that hous­ing was a sub­stan­tial port­fo­lio.

“In our case, at the time, Sen­a­tor Tina Gron­lund-Nunez did an ex­cel­lent job of ad­vanc­ing a very crit­i­cal project in the min­istry with re­spect to hous­ing,”

For­mer min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Ran­dall Mitchell echoed the sen­ti­ment, stat­ing that the as­sign­ment of min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies en­tire­ly with­in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s dis­cre­tion.

Mitchell, who held the port­fo­lio un­der Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion first five years from 2016 and 2018, said that while the spe­cif­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of each min­is­ter would be made clear once gazetted, the Prime Min­is­ter re­tains the au­thor­i­ty to make such de­ci­sions.

“So, with­in the dis­cre­tion of the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, it may be that she sees there is to be a heavy work­load with­in the Min­istry of Hous­ing. It may be that hous­ing is a pri­or­i­ty for the ho­n­ourable prime min­is­ter and there­fore she has seen it fit to have three min­is­ters and not one or two,” Mitchell said.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that with­out know­ing the ex­act dis­tri­b­u­tion of du­ties, it is worth re­mem­ber­ing that the min­istry has his­tor­i­cal­ly man­aged ur­ban de­vel­op­ment, low-cost pub­lic hous­ing, land reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, and over­sight of gov­ern­ment prop­er­ties, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ment in East Port-of-Spain.

Whether the de­ci­sion proves to be ef­fec­tive, Mitchell said, “The proof will be in the pud­ding.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed ad­vised that the new Gov­ern­ment should be giv­en time be­fore be­ing crit­i­cised.

“I mean, to­day is Thurs­day. To­day is day four on the job. Day four of the job, hav­ing been out of gov­ern­ment for 10 years, is re­al­ly and tru­ly un­rea­son­able to judge them and to even cri­tique them in a man­ner that war­rants cri­tiquing be­cause they are still get­ting in­for­ma­tion about the sta­tus of the min­istry, what works has been done, what has not been done, across the board.”

Mo­hammed claimed, though, that based on ear­ly re­ports from sev­er­al min­is­ters, there ap­pear to be se­ri­ous gov­er­nance is­sues that need to be ad­dressed.