Richard Lord

For­mer Plan­ning and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Dick-Forde says it is very dis­turb­ing when a min­is­ter's ap­point­ment is re­voked for wrong­do­ing. She said that in re­sponse to ques­tions on yes­ter­day's sack­ing of her suc­ces­sor, Mary King. King was fired by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her al­leged role in the award of a con­tract to a com­pa­ny owned by her hus­band to set up a Web site at her min­istry. Dick-Forde said such a de­vel­op­ment "re­flects on the Prime Min­is­ter, the Gov­ern­ment and on all per­sons in pub­lic life. "The very ba­sics of ethics and gov­er­nance are not prop­er­ly un­der­stood by many in this coun­try and this must be cor­rect­ed in a for­mal way," Dick-Forde said. She said the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion against the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment last year "were not hon­est in that it took is­sues and mis­rep­re­sent­ed them to the pub­lic."

She added: "Through com­pro­mised in­sti­tu­tions, like the lo­cal chap­ter of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al, the pub­lic is fed with bi­ased in­for­ma­tion from peo­ple with per­son­al agen­das, as we have been wit­ness­ing. She said since the days of the Uff Com­mis­sion she "felt the ori­gin and con­nec­tions of TT­TI must be ex­posed for pub­lic scruti­ny." She said the TT­TI's "links to the in­ter­na­tion­al body must be clear­ly es­tab­lished." Dick-Forde said cit­i­zens of T&T have been "mis­in­formed on how Gov­ern­ment worked as well." She added: "It is not ac­cept­able for a per­son in pub­lic life to lie. Al­so, it is not ac­cept­able for a per­son in pub­lic life to treat the pub­lic ser­vants in an in­hu­mane man­ner and pub­lic ser­vants should nev­er ac­cept that kind of treat­ment." "In the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion the min­is­ter, as the leader in the min­istry, should not put the pub­lic ser­vants in a sit­u­a­tion that can af­fect their in­tegri­ty and even their liveli­hood."