Gail Alexan­der

Split­ting the Works and Trans­port Min­istry be­tween a Works Min­is­ter and a Trans­port Min­is­ter is a recipe for chaos, says for­mer PNM Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. Im­bert was com­ment­ing yes­ter­day on re­ports that Jack Warn­er's Works and Trans­port Min­istry would be split, with Warn­er re­tain­ing roads and bridges and De­vant Ma­haraj han­dling all trans­port mat­ters. Im­bert said: "I don't want to com­ment on who should be in Works or Trans­port. How­ev­er, there's al­ways been a big ar­gu­ment on whether split­ting this min­istry is sen­si­ble since it's dif­fi­cult to man­age." "It's very dif­fi­cult to plan and con­struct roads and main­tain and up­grade them with­out be­ing in charge of traf­fic man­age­ment-these mat­ters are all in­ex­tri­ca­bly en­twined. If you have two sep­a­rate min­is­ters, there could be con­flict."

Im­bert added: "The Works Min­is­ter might want a road some­where and it might not gel with the Trans­port Min­is­ter. You just can't have a Min­is­ter of Works - han­dling roads etc., who isn't re­spon­si­ble for traf­fic man­age­ment al­so, be­cause the lat­ter is the essence of it." Im­bert said the Prime Min­is­ter ap­peared to be reshuf­fling her Cab­i­net now since she was "un­der pres­sure from myr­i­ad is­sues "in­clud­ing Warn­er's FI­FA mat­ter, the NP con­tract is­sue and those con­cern­ing her events ad­vis­er, Sasha Mo­hammed.

"When you see ed­i­to­ri­als call­ing for some min­is­ters to re­sign, pub­lished in cer­tain news­pa­pers per­ceived as be­ing very sup­port­ive of Gov­ern­ment, it gives you an idea of what's go­ing on," Im­bert added.

"But mak­ing changes as a re­ac­tion to a bac­cha­nal, the re­sult of that, in­evitably, is that mis­takes are made and un­suit­able peo­ple are brought in­to the Gov­ern­ment. I've seen very good peo­ple from the pri­vate sec­tor ap­point­ed to Gov­ern­ment and turn out to be un­suit­able." Im­bert con­firmed all PNM MPs and Sen­a­tors will be out for to­day's cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment. San Fer­nan­do East MP Patrick Man­ning who was sus­pend­ed dur­ing the lat­ter part of the First Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment-which end­ed on June 17-will al­so be at­tend­ing, it is un­der­stood, since his sus­pen­sion end­ed with the con­clu­sion of the First Ses­sion.