To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, Trevor James, has de­nied us­ing un­der­hand­ed tac­tics to char­ter a pri­vate air­craft to leave Mar­tinique on Sun­day.

In fact, James said it was his “deep and wide” net­work of fam­i­ly and friends who or­gan­ised the flight, as he had run out of mon­ey. He added that there was al­so “mis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­chief” re­gard­ing al­le­ga­tions that cus­toms and im­mi­gra­tion pro­to­cols were ig­nored.

James had trav­elled with a mem­ber of staff to Trinidad via Bar­ba­dos, St Mar­tin (Dutch side), Guade­loupe and Mar­tinique to at­tend the Con­nec­tiv­i­ty Con­fer­ence of the Greater Caribbean from Oc­to­ber 18-20.

How­ev­er, Hur­ri­cane Tam­my caused the can­cel­la­tion of all flights as the event end­ed, which prompt­ed James to char­ter the pri­vate air­craft.

Dur­ing a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ple­nary sit­ting yes­ter­day, James, in ris­ing to give an ex­pla­na­tion said, “There is the sug­ges­tion that some­how the plane was an il­le­gal plane, that some­how, we were able to con­tact im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms and maybe ring their hands so we could land, en­ter and get the pass­port stamped. All of that is mis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­chief.”

He said he had no re­grets over mak­ing the de­ci­sion.

“I am thank­ful that I took the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for my safe­ty and the safe­ty of the mem­ber of staff who trav­elled with me to get to To­ba­go safe­ly and not be strand­ed in Mar­tinique with­out ac­cess to cred­it card fa­cil­i­ties in the mid­dle of a storm,” he said.

“We were ad­vised that the end flight avail­able out of St Mar­tin Dutch side, which we were to trav­el from back to Trinidad, would be on Tues­day of this week.”

He said he in­formed the en­tire Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of the sit­u­a­tion via What­sApp mes­sage on Fri­day, as the cell ser­vice in Mar­tinique was down.

“Sub­se­quent to that, I reached out to my net­work, which is as wide and deep as can be, be­cause a Sec­re­tary of the THA was in Mar­tinique where his cred­it card al­lo­ca­tion for for­eign ex­change had been ex­ceed­ed and I could not pay for an ex­tra night or to buy a tick­et to any oth­er lo­ca­tion.

“This be­cause Mr (Colm) Im­bert (Fi­nance Min­is­ter) and Mr (Dr Kei­th) Row­ley (Prime Min­is­ter) pre­fer to give hun­dreds or mil­lions of for­eign ex­change to a few peo­ple in the coun­try and or­di­nary cit­i­zens, even like my­self that rep­re­sent the peo­ple, have to trav­el with­out suf­fi­cient funds on cred­it cards,” James ex­plained.

“There­fore, I reached out to my net­work of friends and fam­i­ly and I was in­formed that there might be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to trav­el from Mar­tinique back to Trinidad and To­ba­go by light plane.”

He said up­on his re­turn home, he told Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine that his pri­vate arrange­ments to re­turn to To­ba­go were “at no cost to the THA”.

Mean­while, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis said there were still more ques­tions than an­swers. He called for com­plete trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing how much the flight cost and who ac­tu­al­ly paid James’ way home.

Den­nis asked, “Is the sec­re­tary say­ing that he did not have enough mon­ey to stay an ex­tra night in a ho­tel but he found enough mon­ey to book a pri­vate jet? And sec­ond­ly, is the Sec­re­tary’s wide net­work of fam­i­ly and friends in­clud­ing any con­trac­tors or busi­ness­es per­son do­ing busi­ness with the THA? I’m ask­ing ... We want to know who pay. He must be spe­cif­ic,” said Den­nis.