Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he in­tends to re­view the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke.

This comes af­ter Duke’s call on Au­gus­tine to pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to mem­bers of the Rox­bor­ough Folk Per­form­ers, who are cur­rent­ly in New York on tour but re­quire funds for ba­sic ameni­ties to sur­vive un­til they re­turn home.

The group was de­scribed as be­ing strand­ed in the US by Duke in a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day.

Duke is al­so the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader while Au­gus­tine is a deputy leader.

Yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine out­lined the cur­rent re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary as mat­ters of in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal re­la­tions, di­as­po­ra re­la­tions, for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments, a pol­i­cy mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion unit as well as an en­er­gy bor­ough, along with ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port.

Au­gus­tine said he will be­gin re­view­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with Duke’s po­si­tion to en­sure they are in line with the THA’s man­date to make To­ba­go reach its true po­ten­tial. He said it was his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sign du­ties to his sec­re­taries, as stat­ed by To­ba­go’s laws.

“I will re­view those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­signed to him (Duke) and by to­mor­row I will let you know what re­spon­si­bil­i­ties he will have, if any at all,” he said.

At the post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, Au­gus­tine sought to give de­tails about how the THA has as­sist­ed the per­form­ers. He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400,000 was spent to as­sist the Rox­bor­ough Folk Per­form­ers to get to New York.

“The THA did not send them, the THA spon­sored, part­ly spon­sored, their trip to the US,” he said.

Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted the per­form­ers ap­proached the THA for some as­sis­tance, since they had sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties sched­uled in and around the tri-state area in New York for Labour Day fes­tiv­i­ties.

“I was as­sured then that they weren’t look­ing for the THA to give 100%, they were look­ing for the THA to help get them there,” he added.

The Chief Sec­re­tary ex­plained that he met with the prin­ci­pals of the group, which was led by for­mer min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin, about two months ago and 27 peo­ple were sched­uled to take the trip. The group in ques­tion al­so had visa chal­lenges, which meant many mem­bers of the team on­ly got through with their visas last week and then pro­ceed­ed to trav­el on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.

Since the group de­part­ed the coun­try so quick­ly, Au­gus­tine re­vealed the THA could not have is­sued any cheques and as such, a promis­so­ry note was giv­en to the trav­el agency to set­tle the bill.

He stressed that the THA is not in a fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to dis­trib­ute cash on its whim and has to go through the ex­ec­u­tive board as well, since he alone can­not make the de­ci­sion.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, how­ev­er, Duke took to his so­cial me­dia page and ac­cused Au­gus­tine of mak­ing a di­rect threat against him.

“To­day, my broth­er has com­menced a po­lit­i­cal war against his po­lit­i­cal leader which he can­not win,” Duke said.

“Yes­ter­day (Sep­tem­ber 7), twen­ty-sev­en per­sons were chal­lenged with food and in spite of what was be­ing said, the an­swer was food, and my con­cern was how do we feed these To­bag­o­ni­ans on a dai­ly ba­sis un­til they have to take their ex­it.”

Duke said he called up­on the THA to fix the mat­ter ex­pe­di­tious­ly to look af­ter the strand­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans.

He called the re­view of his func­tions “laugh­able” and “ridicu­lous” and called on Au­gus­tine to “hum­ble him­self, be­fore he makes an­oth­er fool­ish move that he will re­gret.”

He urged Au­gus­tine to re­solve the is­sue with him.

“Let’s fix this, let us change your name from liar Far­ley to fix this Far­ley,” he said.