To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has de­scribed the leak­ing of a $25,000 in­voice by Dr Win­ford James for edit­ing ser­vices pro­vid­ed on the THA bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion as “hypocrisy, and strong bad mind.”

He made the com­ment as he de­fend­ed the pay­ment at the THA’s post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil Meet­ing yes­ter­day.

Au­gus­tine said the in­voice was cir­cu­lat­ed in the me­dia “as if some­thing ne­far­i­ous hap­pened.”

In­stead, he said it was stan­dard prac­tice across di­vi­sions and min­istries.

The in­voice stat­ed Dr James was charg­ing for “Edit­ing of Bud­get State­ment for 2023.”

“That is for lan­guage edit­ing skills, be­cause this is now go­ing to be­come an of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment, it can’t be a case where I sit and ed­it it and you end up with some green verbs in there,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said it is a ser­vice the di­vi­sion will not need through­out the year, so in­stead of hav­ing some­one re­tained on staff the THA pays as the need aris­es.

Au­gus­tine al­so re­vealed that in 2020 they re­ceived two in­voic­es - one for $12,425 and for $23,850. He added that in 2021, there was an­oth­er in­voice for $33,750.

“So you will see that it’s very con­sis­tent, that this di­vi­sion, as with any Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance, has to out­source this kind of edit­ing, from time to time, the out­sourc­ing will hap­pen for bud­gets, the out­sourc­ing will hap­pen, if you have to do me­dia re­view doc­u­ments, the out­sourc­ing will hap­pen if it is we have to have eco­nom­ic plans done.”