Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced on Mon­day the reshuf­fling of some min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions due to the un­time­ly death of his Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Franklin Khan.

Stu­art Young was named to head this im­por­tant min­istry, while Fitzger­ald Hinds re­placed him in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, an­oth­er key port­fo­lio, and Fos­ter Cum­mings, in turn, was giv­en the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice, which Hinds pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed.

The de­ci­sion may have been rushed due to the un­for­tu­nate pass­ing of Khan. Still, the usu­al ques­tions about suc­ces­sion plan­ning with­in the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and by ex­ten­sion Gov­ern­ment, have again come up from John Pub­lic.

In­deed, some are ques­tion­ing whether Young has the ex­pe­ri­ence to lead his cur­rent min­istry, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the state of the glob­al en­er­gy in­dus­try and the ex­per­tise that would be re­quired to nav­i­gate it. Min­is­ter Young, in his ca­pac­i­ty of Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, would have gained some ex­pe­ri­ence in en­er­gy-re­lat­ed mat­ters as part of del­e­ga­tions on such mat­ters with the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing the par­ty’s first term and cur­rent tenure.

De­spite this, one does not ex­pect he will be the go-to repos­i­to­ry of in­for­ma­tion in his new port­fo­lio and will have to lean heav­i­ly on the tech­nocrats in his min­istry. It is pos­si­ble, there­fore, that the Prime Min­is­ter may be putting Young un­der more pres­sure than he can han­dle, un­less of course it is on­ly a stop-gap mea­sure whilst an­oth­er suit­able prospect is found.

Hinds mean­while has a slight edge hav­ing come from a le­gal back­ground and al­so with a pre­vi­ous stint as Min­is­ter of State in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry un­der the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM regime in 2002-2007. Again, Hinds was by­passed by the Prime Min­is­ter in con­sid­er­a­tion for the port­fo­lio when the PNM took of­fice in its first term in 2015 and one won­ders whether the Prime Min­is­ter is al­so look­ing else­where to fill this po­si­tion in the fu­ture. Nev­er­the­less, it is ex­pect­ed Hinds will be able to im­me­di­ate­ly call on past ex­pe­ri­ence to deal with some of the press­ing is­sues.

One of them will be the spi­ralling rate of mur­ders in the coun­try. So­ci­ety has been ap­palled over the last few days with the killings of el­der­ly cit­i­zens Util­da Joseph, 96, Anand Ma­haraj, 60, and Mervyn Prescott, 76.

Cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to seek the com­fort of re­turn­ing to con­duct­ing day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties with­out the fear of be­com­ing an­oth­er crime sta­tis­tic. But we are no clos­er to see­ing the leg­is­la­tion need­ed to fill the ex­ist­ing loop­holes in law need­ed to rid so­ci­ety of the crime scourge. This is due in part to the un­savoury be­hav­iour of the Op­po­si­tion when it comes to sup­port­ing cru­cial laws aimed at tack­ling gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, which con­tin­ues to be the main cause of ma­jor crime.

Need­less to say, Min­is­ter Young and Hinds in par­tic­u­lar, and Min­is­ter Cum­mings to a less­er ex­tent, have their work cut out for them and with the added pres­sures of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, there will cer­tain­ly be no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od for them. We cer­tain­ly hope, for the sake of so­ci­ety, they ac­com­plish their mis­sions.