Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James has been re­moved as the deputy chair­man of Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es Ltd board, fol­low­ing con­cerns over his re­la­tion to To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and De­vel­op­ment Trevor James, un­der whose purview the board falls.

The an­nounce­ment was made by THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine dur­ing a post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing at the Calder Hall Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex yes­ter­day.

“I think the re­spon­si­ble thing to do as the head of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil is to lis­ten,” Au­gus­tine said.

“I have tak­en the de­ci­sion that we will re­move Dr James from the Stud­ley Park board and that Dr James will as­sist me across on the Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Fund Ltd board in­stead. So we will move him to a board un­der my di­rec­tion here at the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my.”

Au­gus­tine al­so dis­missed claims that the move was still an act of nepo­tism.

“I want to be clear, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, this is not nepo­tism by de­f­i­n­i­tion of what nepo­tism is. The con­flict of in­ter­est is not as di­rect as many have been pur­port­ing it to be and there is no known cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty that Dr James has ever been in­volved in, nor did I see any­one ques­tion Dr James’ abil­i­ty on this board. So I want­ed to make that very, very clear and I want to make it clear that Dr James was not be­ing salaried by the board,” he said.

He said Dr James was con­sid­ered for the po­si­tion due to his com­pe­ten­cy, not his re­la­tion to the di­vi­sion’s Sec­re­tary.

“So it’s un­for­tu­nate that many sought to dis­par­age his char­ac­ter in an at­tempt to make a po­lit­i­cal point,” Au­gus­tine said.

Dr Win­ford James is the broth­er of Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and De­vel­op­ment Trevor James. He was among 11 peo­ple ap­point­ed to the SPEL board re­cent­ly.

How­ev­er, To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber head Mar­tin George was among some sec­tors of the pub­lic who had for his ap­point­ment to be re­voked giv­en his fa­mil­ial re­la­tion to Sec­re­tary James.