Yvonne Ba­boolal

Pop­u­lar lo­cal rock band, Or­ange Sky, which was hired by the UNC dur­ing its gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign last year, came un­der heavy fire from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the Low­er House yes­ter­day. Row­ley, slam­ming the Gov­ern­ment's eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery ini­tia­tives pre­sent­ed ear­li­er by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, wad­ed again in­to Tourism Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith's trip to In­dia. He said: "The most un­like­ly min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Tourism, is in In­dia lead­ing a team. "He is go­ing on a trip halfway around the world for a 45-minute pro­gramme in which he has to talk for ten min­utes and Or­ange Sky has to play for sev­en min­utes.

"For sev­en min­utes, they are stay­ing in the most ex­pen­sive ho­tel, a five-star ho­tel. It's pay­back for the 2010 cam­paign," Row­ley said. Re­spond­ing to out­bursts from the Gov­ern­ment bench­es, the Op­po­si­tion Leader said he had noth­ing against In­dia. His grouse was that no steel­band, ca­lyp­so or tas­sa were tak­en on the In­dia trip. He said: "They send a rock band, they gone to rock In­dia. At the tune of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, they gone to play rock mu­sic in New Del­hi. "And that is what will bring tourists to T&T," Row­ley said, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly. On the same note, he al­so re­peat­ed his at­tack on Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts for bring­ing Amer­i­can rap star, Nic­ki Mi­naj to T&T.