For­mer Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act makes it il­le­gal for one Di­vi­sion to have two Sec­re­taries, as con­fu­sion grows over who is in charge of Tourism.

In a state­ment this morn­ing, Den­nis ar­gued, “Fol­low­ing the is­suance of a press re­lease by the Chief Sec­re­tary which told us that Zor­isha Hack­ett was tem­porar­i­ly as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion, there were two very con­fus­ing de­vel­op­ments. First­ly, Tashia Bur­ris told us that she is still the Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion; and sec­ond­ly, Zor­isha Hack­ett told us that she is the Sec­re­tary with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties. Both state­ments con­tra­dict­ed the Chief Sec­re­tary’s ini­tial press re­lease and now we have more con­fu­sion.”

Den­nis said Sec­tion 37 of the THA Act is clear.

“Each Di­vi­sion of the THA should have one Sec­re­tary with clear and un­di­vid­ed au­thor­i­ty… There­fore, a Di­vi­sion can­not legal­ly have two Sec­re­taries as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it.”

He de­scribed the cur­rent arrange­ment as “mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion and child’s-play” in one of To­ba­go’s most crit­i­cal Di­vi­sions and called on the Chief Sec­re­tary to clar­i­fy “ur­gent­ly and pub­licly in the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance, de­cen­cy, and or­der.”

But Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett de­fend­ed the arrange­ment dur­ing a Car­ni­val press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, say­ing her ap­point­ment was meant to strength­en the Di­vi­sion dur­ing Bur­ris’ leave and work with her and the as­sis­tant sec­re­tary ahead of the Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val and Blue Food Fes­ti­val.