To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don has writ­ten Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ex­press­ing sur­prise and dis­ap­point­ment that his re­quests to ho­n­our the 30-year-old tra­di­tion of ap­point­ing nom­i­nees of the THA to State boards and na­tion­al com­mit­tees has been to­tal­ly ig­nored.

Lon­don is re­quest­ing an ear­ly meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter to "dis­cuss the THA rep­re­sen­ta­tion on boards and com­mit­tees and oth­er is­sues that are like­ly to have an ad­verse af­fect on the pro­mo­tion of har­mo­ny in the af­fairs of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

In fact, he not­ed in his let­ter, dat­ed De­cem­ber 9, that not on­ly have none of the 38 nom­i­nees rec­om­mend­ed by the THA been ap­point­ed but there has not even been ac­knowl­edge­ment of, or ver­bal re­sponse to the re­quests. This is the third let­ter on the is­sue the THA Chief Sec­re­tary has writ­ten the Prime Min­is­ter since she took of­fice. The first was on June 7 and the sec­ond on Au­gust 4 and there has been no ac­knowl­edge­ment.

In his De­cem­ber 9 let­ter, Lon­don said no one could dis­pute that many of the boards and com­mit­tees were charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make de­ci­sions on ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment that fall un­der the purview of the THA.

He added that it would there­fore be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and could even fos­ter avoid­able con­flict if the as­sem­bly was to be ex­clud­ed from the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process.

The Chief Sec­re­tary em­pha­sised that it was un­prece­dent­ed for the as­sem­bly to be de­nied rep­re­sen­ta­tion on boards and com­mit­tees such as the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency, the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank, the Na­tion­al Self-Help Com­mis­sion and the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion, among oth­ers.

Lon­don told the Prime Min­is­ter that over the past 30 years, every Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had ap­point­ed to boards and com­mit­tees, To­bag­o­ni­ans who were not rec­om­mend­ed by the THA, but this was nev­er done at the ex­pense of THA rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He hoped that her ad­min­is­tra­tion would re­con­sid­er that new pol­i­cy which seemed to be ig­nor­ing a three-decade old prac­tice.