Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter/ Pro­duc­er

The doc­u­ment sent by the Gov­ern­ment to the Pres­i­dent to be gazetted, which out­lines the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of each min­istry, con­tains er­rors and will now have to be amend­ed be­fore be­ing pub­lished.

A gazette, in this case the T&T Gazette, is an of­fi­cial pub­li­ca­tion for the pur­pose of no­ti­fy­ing the ac­tions and de­ci­sions of the gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, while Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the doc­u­ment with the er­rors is not of­fi­cial, as it has not yet been gazetted, that ver­sion was meant for of­fi­cial use, as page two of the doc­u­ment states, “Gov­ern­ment print­er, For­ward­ed for pub­li­ca­tion in the Gazette, please.”

Two blue stamps be­long­ing to the Pres­i­dent’s Sec­re­tary and an­oth­er with the Pres­i­dent’s name are al­so af­fixed to the 65-page doc­u­ment, in­di­cat­ing that it was re­ceived by the Head of State.

Padarath con­firmed two er­rors and the pos­si­ble ex­is­tence of a third.

In pe­rus­ing the doc­u­ment, Guardian Me­dia no­ticed that the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment which over­sees civ­il, land and com­mer­cial reg­is­tra­tion in T&T was placed un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that was in­ad­ver­tent­ly placed there when it should have been un­der the purview of the Sad­dam Ho­sein-led Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs.

The Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) was al­so moved from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. Min­is­ter Padarath ex­plained the ra­tio­nale for the change.

“The Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties has all the port­fo­lio ar­eas that deal with en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters. CEPEP, the Prime Min­is­ter thought was bet­ter aligned to this Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties in light of the man­date of CEPEP to deal with en­vi­ron­men­tal clean-ups, it would bet­ter stream­lined un­der the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, who has that man­date, in­clu­sive of SWM­COL.”

How­ev­er, the er­ror oc­curred when the CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and South Pro­grammes were placed un­der the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in­stead of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

With re­spect to these er­rors, Padarath ex­plained that to rec­ti­fy them would take, “a sim­ple no­ti­fi­ca­tion to Her Ex­cel­len­cy from the OPM.”

Asked when the doc­u­ment would of­fi­cial­ly be gazetted Padarath said, “I am await­ing to be ad­vised by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary as it’s an ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tion.”

Padarath said an­oth­er er­ror may have ex­ist­ed but at the time did not ex­plain what it was.

How­ev­er, a ma­jor cause of con­tention is al­so which min­istry has spe­cif­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Prison Ser­vice.

Un­der the last Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, that du­ty fell to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter. That min­istry no longer ex­ists, as the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion has split the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­tween the new­ly cre­at­ed Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Min­istry of De­fence.

But the word “prison” is not men­tioned un­der ei­ther of their sched­ules in the doc­u­ment.

In­stead, the words “Prison Sys­tem” and not “Prison Ser­vice” is found un­der the sched­ule for the Min­istry of Jus­tice.

Prison sys­tem is bro­ken down in­to five du­ties which are pa­role and pris­on­er man­age­ment, prison ser­vice re­form, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, wit­ness pro­tec­tion, care and sup­port and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. And while those func­tions speak to the le­gal re­form of pris­ons, it does not in­di­cate if the min­is­ter will have au­thor­i­ty over the man­age­ment of the na­tion’s pris­ons and the prison of­fi­cers who work there.

Guardian Me­dia asked Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar if, in fact, the line of­fi­cer for prison of­fi­cers would be Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj (Min­is­ter of Jus­tice.)

Re­spond­ing via What­sApp she said, “Yes.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands there is still some con­fu­sion on that mat­ter.

On Tues­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe met with Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Asked if he knew his line min­is­ter was, in fact, Ma­haraj, Cor­raspe said, “The prison ex­ec­u­tive and I met with Min­is­ter Alexan­der at the min­istry’s re­quest, made the pre­vi­ous day. I was not aware at the time that the Prison Ser­vice had been gazetted to the Min­istry of Jus­tice.”

Fur­ther ques­tions were sent to Padarath and the PM ask­ing how these er­rors oc­curred. How­ev­er, no re­spons­es came.

A for­mer state of­fi­cial with ex­pe­ri­ence in these mat­ters, and who has been in­volved in this process be­fore, ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia un­der anonymi­ty that they would have gone through those doc­u­ments be­fore it was sent to the Pres­i­dent.

“It was my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to get it gazetted. And I would have gone through it be­fore it went out to make sure it was done prop­er­ly, be­cause you don’t want to send it and then when they print it, it is wrong. So, I went through it to make sure it cross match­es and then it be­comes of­fi­cial,” the for­mer of­fi­cial said.

The for­mer of­fi­cial added, how­ev­er, that mis­takes are not new.

“Yes, some­times you will get an er­ror but when it was done with me I can’t re­call many or ma­jor er­rors. And then if it is gazetted and you dis­cov­er an er­ror you would do an amend­ment.”

The for­mer of­fi­cial added, though, that there is no set pro­ce­dure for this to be done and may vary by ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent for a re­sponse on the mat­ter. When asked when the doc­u­ment would be gazetted, its com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit said, “The Pres­i­dent, act­ing on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, set­tles the Sched­ule which is then for­ward­ed to the Gov­ern­ment Print­ery for pub­li­ca­tion.”

The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent was al­so asked if it could con­firm re­ceipt of the doc­u­ment that con­tained er­rors but got no re­sponse to that ques­tion.