Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

gail.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh says he will give a rul­ing, all in one day, on the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mo­tions of priv­i­lege against the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, as well as on a mo­tion by Gov­ern­ment MP Bar­ry Padarath against PNM’s Colm Im­bert.

He will be rul­ing on whether the three mat­ters meet the thresh­old to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

It’s not con­firmed if Singh will de­liv­er his rul­ing when the House meets this af­ter­noon.

The mo­tions com­prise PNM MP Colm Im­bert’s move to have the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gate the re­cent “cuff you down” re­marks to him by the Prime Min­is­ter.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Bar­ry Padarath has counter-filed a mo­tion to have the com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gate Im­bert for al­leged “mo­lesta­tion and men­ac­ing be­hav­iour” to­wards the Prime Min­is­ter.

PNM Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has al­so filed a mo­tion seek­ing to have At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the com­mit­tee for an al­leged ho­mo­pho­bic re­mark heard on an open mi­cro­phone dur­ing re­cent pro­ceed­ings.

At last week’s sit­ting, Gon­za­les re­mind­ed Singh about the await­ed rul­ing for the PNM mo­tions. Singh had said apart from the two PNM mo­tions, there was al­so a third mat­ter.

He in­di­cat­ed the sit­u­a­tion re­quired re­view of the reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem, the ev­i­dence and de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of the com­plaints set out.

Singh as­sured that as soon as he de­cid­ed whether a pri­ma fa­cie case had been made out, “it will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed.”

On the Gov­ern­ment’s in­sis­tence, Singh said, “I will give my rul­ing in due course.”

Al­so at the re­cent sit­ting, Works Min­is­ter Jear­lean John, re­ply­ing to PNM MP Stu­art Young’s queries, said White­hall “as we know now, is sub­ject to ex­ces­sive flood­ing with mould every­where” and re­mains un­in­hab­it­able be­cause of ex­ten­sive work that has to be done. She said works are on­go­ing.

John added, “At the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, jan­i­to­r­i­al staff work, land­scap­ing, el­e­va­tor main­te­nance, garbage dis­pos­al, air re­fresh­en­er (sic) pest con­trol and fix­ing the ‘black’ (sic) wa­ter fea­ture had to be done, since every space was dirty, filthy, mouldy and run down.”

“But we have not touched the (PM’s) res­i­dence, it’s just the way it was on April 28,” John added.

This af­ter­noon, the House will de­bate the bill to reg­u­late the fire­works in­dus­try.

The Sen­ate, which al­so meets at 1.30 pm, will de­bate the Fi­nance 2025 bill on mea­sures aris­ing from the 2026 Bud­get.