Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

To­ba­go stake­hold­ers are cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic af­ter Tues­day’s meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

A state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day con­firmed Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Au­gus­tine met, adding that some of the dis­cus­sions sur­round­ed To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, ex­pand­ing the THA’s leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty, the con­struc­tion of the Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School and the need for con­tin­u­ous con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the meet­ing and the top­ic of To­ba­go au­ton­o­my specif­i­cal­ly, In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus once again called for the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty-led THA to re­vis­it the bill.

She said, “The cur­rent bills are over a decade old and since then we have had at least 12,000 young peo­ple and youth com­ing in­to this space and by right, they de­serve a space. So many things have been changed since then; the ad­vent of shift­ing ca­reers, dif­fer­ent types of jobs, the eco­nom­ic cli­mate, the glob­al shocks, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, all of those things play a part now in what youth may want to see in terms of our au­ton­o­my go­ing for­ward.”

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion To­ba­go of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts said while it was good news that the con­struc­tion of Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School was an agen­da item in the meet­ing, he will wait to see what even­tu­al­ly oc­curs.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “It can on­ly be good news, and it is wel­com­ing, but I am not one to get ex­cit­ed by these sub­mis­sions though. We have heard these things in the past about work be­ing done, drains be­ing done, the sod turn­ing, so there are lit­tle pro­gress­es, but the state of the cur­rent school re­quires ur­gent ac­tion from both the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA. We hope those con­ver­sa­tions go from con­ver­sa­tions to ac­tion.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the five-hour-long meet­ing showed an un­der­stand­ing of what was achieved in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

He said, “What is hap­pen­ing here is a mu­tu­al re­spect be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and an un­der­stand­ing that a man­date has been giv­en to the UNC and giv­en to the TPP and col­lec­tive­ly, that man­date must ben­e­fit all of the peo­ple of T&T. So, not on­ly is it a re­set of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA but a re­align­ment and it is the way to go. It is the re­spect that must be giv­en to the will of peo­ple.”