Sascha Wil­son

Un­fazed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to split his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has vowed to work even hard­er and re­tain his ti­tle as the most pop­u­lar min­is­ter.

Speak­ing with re­porters at La Brea yes­ter­day, Warn­er said he was not sure what re­spon­si­bil­i­ties were now un­der his purview and that of new Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj. "We don't have an idea yet what the sched­ule is," he said. Warn­er said he was un­cer­tain about the Prime Min­is­ter's log­ic for the split but he did not think it had any­thing to do with the FI­FA con­tro­ver­sy which led to his res­ig­na­tion from FI­FA. Warn­er said: "I am sure the Prime Min­is­ter is the best judge of what she does for the coun­try and I have to abide by what­ev­er I am asked to do. I will do it to the best of my abil­i­ty. "Based on the col­lec­tive ef­fort of all of us you will see us per­form­ing as nev­er be­fore."

Agree­ing with Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert that ide­al­ly Works and Trans­port need­ed to be to­geth­er, he re­called the split in the port­fo­lio was done un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day-led gov­ern­ment but it did not work.

"At the end of the day if it doesn't work, as it did not in the past, then we will have to re­view it. I am ever the op­ti­mist," he said. Warn­er did not fore­see any dif­fi­cul­ty in work­ing with Ma­haraj whom he had worked with pre­vi­ous­ly at the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) and the min­istry. Asked about a re­cent poll that put him as the most pop­u­lar min­is­ter, he said: "I win the poll and I will win the poll again and again, any­time." When asked to com­ment on the Caribbean Air­lines Ltd board, he said that was now a mat­ter for Ma­haraj but he con­firmed the ap­point­ments of two board mem­bers were re­voked.

Warn­er spoke with re­porters af­ter tour­ing the min­istry's High­way Di­vi­sion sub-of­fices at Ce­dros and La Brea. He viewed coastal ero­sion at St An­drew's Es­tate in Ica­cos and at Chin Kit Street, Cap-de-Ville, and the Ica­cos riv­er which is to be cleaned. The min­is­ter said he was un­cer­tain about the ex­tent of work he could do now but high­ways di­rec­tor Roger Ganesh he said, sug­gest­ed set­ting up a coastal au­thor­i­ty which he (Warn­er) would be ex­plor­ing. De­scrib­ing the di­lap­i­dat­ed sub-of­fices as scan­dalous, Warn­er promised to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion ur­gent­ly. He promised tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion un­til prop­er build­ings could be con­struct­ed. "I saw a toi­let bowl for women which was patched up three or four times. That is un­be­liev­able for a coun­try like this," he added.