Sean Nero

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is bat­ting for Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er in the Caribbean Air­lines im­passe. Warn­er and the new board of the state-owned air­line has been at log­ger­heads over the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny. Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment post Gen­er­al Coun­cil me­dia con­fer­ence held at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, Dr Row­ley said no state en­ter­prise should op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly of the line min­is­ter. He said, "We are re­fus­ing to ac­cept that this coun­try could have spent $50 mil­lion on the UFF En­quiry to en­sure that we un­der­stood what should hap­pen with the man­age­ment of state en­ter­pris­es and we have a sit­u­a­tion where a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment is telling the coun­try that a state en­ter­prise is op­er­at­ing with­out the su­per­vi­sion of the min­is­ter who car­ries that port­fo­lio." Dr Row­ley made it clear the PNM would not ac­cept that a state en­ter­prise could op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly of the line min­is­ter, who­ev­er that line min­is­ter may be. "Mr Warn­er hap­pens to be the line min­is­ter for Caribbean Air­lines. Caribbean Air­lines hap­pens to be 100 per cent state-owned.

"Whether it is Caribbean Air­lines, Wasa, T&TEC or NGC we are talk­ing about a gov­er­nance struc­ture. So, this is not a per­son­al thing." He slammed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for cre­at­ing the Ude­cott en­vi­ron­ment hav­ing been in gov­ern­ment for on­ly six months, and said she did not have the op­tion to re­main silent on the mat­ter. "...Be­cause if this is the sub­ject of a Cab­i­net meet­ing for three-and-a-half hours and all that came out of it is an ul­ti­ma­tum from the line min­is­ter, we be­lieve that the Prime Min­is­ter needs to ad­dress this mat­ter in a way to tell the coun­try that pub­lic busi­ness is be­ing prop­er­ly han­dled as per the Con­sti­tu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly where the state en­ter­prise is em­bark­ing on sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­ture, in for­eign cur­ren­cy, with de­ci­sions be­ing made in an en­vi­ron­ment where the line min­is­ter is say­ing I am not in charge." He said based on the com­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter and the board the coun­try got the im­pres­sion, sup­port­ed by the ev­i­dence of their state­ments, that this en­ter­prise is re­port­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter.

'Come clean on SIA files'

Mean­while, Row­ley said the PM must to come clean on the where­abouts of ma­te­r­i­al gath­ered by the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA).

He said his par­ty was dis­sat­is­fied with the Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of the SIA mat­ter; its re­port­ing re­la­tion­ships and the ac­count­abil­i­ty of the work of the SIA, es­pe­cial­ly the work that pre­ced­ed this mat­ter com­ing to the Par­lia­ment.