Ryan Ba­choo

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley held a press con­fer­ence at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port up­on his re­turn from trips to Ghana and In­dia. In case you missed it, here are the ma­jor points of Dr Row­ley's me­dia brief­ing.

1) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hailed his Ghana trip as a "suc­cess­ful vis­it." He had di­rect meet­ings with Pres­i­dent Nana Aku­fo-Ad­do. Ghana del­e­ga­tion to vis­it T&T in June. "Ghana is a good place to find busi­ness," Dr Row­ley said.

2) Prime Min­is­ter says he was in­vit­ed to In­dia by Am­bani fam­i­ly who owns Re­liance In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed. He thanked for­mer West In­dies play­ers Kieron Pol­lard and Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, who saw "pos­si­bil­i­ties" for this coun­try in In­dia and opened the way for the gov­ern­ment.

3) The gov­ern­ment has made avail­able a 30-acre plot of land for Re­liance In­dus­tries to build an acad­e­my for crick­et.

4) An ar­chi­tect from In­dia was sent to T&T a few weeks ago. Costs of acad­e­my will be de­ter­mined. Ar­chi­tects are close to send­ing T&T the first set of draw­ings. Lease for land be­ing fi­nalised. The land sur­vey is be­ing com­plet­ed. "What we have is a com­mit­ment," Dr Row­ley tells Guardian Me­dia's Jensen La Vende. Labour will come from T&T but tech­ni­cal work will be done by In­di­ans. Group from In­dia to ar­rive in T&T in the com­ing weeks.

5) Dr Row­ley an­nounces for­mer West In­dies Women's crick­eters, Anisa Mo­hammed and Meris­sa Aguilleira, will work with Sport Com­pa­ny to en­cour­age young play­ers to play the game as an an­swer to the grow­ing ques­tion of why for­mer West In­dies greats are not in­volved in help­ing the re­gion­al game.

6) Prime Min­is­ter says there is no in­ter­est in the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery from In­di­an busi­ness­men. How­ev­er, he says his cab­i­net has some RF­Ps (re­quest for pro­pos­al) in hand to con­sid­er.

7) Gov­ern­ment has been "blind­sided" by SSA, the Prime Min­is­ter said. He adds there is an on­go­ing, se­ri­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place - the Prime Min­is­ter says in re­la­tion to Ma­jor Roger Best be­ing dis­missed from the SSA. He hopes to re­turn the agency to its pur­pose, says there may be changes in the lead­er­ship but Brigadier Gen­er­al (Ret'd.) An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer (Act­ing SSA Di­rec­tor) is good right now.

8) Dr Row­ley says he is dis­ap­point­ed to see To­ba­go be­com­ing just like the rest of the na­tion as it per­tains to crime. He says the crim­i­nals have free­dom of move­ment and as­so­ci­a­tion and are look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties in To­ba­go. Dr Row­ley says he is not fa­mil­iar with the THA Po­lice Unit Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has tout­ed but he has no prob­lem with a lo­cal con­stab­u­lary.

9) The Prime Min­is­ter said the cab­i­net looked at all the op­tions avail­able when it comes to the post of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and thought ex­tend­ing Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher's time was the best de­ci­sion. Dr Row­ley says they were hop­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion would have act­ed while Er­la was there. He in­quired and was told they couldn't ad­ver­tise the po­si­tion while some­one is in the post. He says the coun­try's sys­tem of se­lect­ing a po­lice does not per­mit best prac­tice. "We may be the on­ly coun­try in the world where the sys­tem of ap­point­ing a po­lice gives the coun­try so much trou­ble," he tells the me­dia.

10) Prime Min­is­ter says he is quite sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed that the is­sue with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al hap­pened. "This is not the kind of thing I an­tic­i­pat­ed," he said. Dr Row­ley says he is quite dis­tressed about it. He la­bels it an "un­nec­es­sary, dan­ger­ous bac­cha­nal."