Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says RED­jet is un­able to fly in­to T&T be­cause of ir­re­spon­si­ble ac­tion by of­fi­cials of the T&T Gov­ern­ment. Row­ley said the is­sue of RED­jet be­ing al­lowed to land in T&T had be­come a Cari­com is­sue. The air­line was grant­ed per­mis­sion to land in Bar­ba­dos but not in T&T. The is­sue was raised at the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in St Kitts over the week­end. Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said Bar­ba­dos now had a prob­lem with T&T "and there is some el­e­ment of hos­til­i­ty in there." He said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had not spo­ken clear­ly on this mat­ter. "It's been all con­fu­sion on a mat­ter that if prop­er­ly han­dled should have been sim­ple and straight for­ward," Row­ley said.

He said the prob­lem was the re­sult of min­is­te­r­i­al state­ments that were made out of turn. "We now have a spat be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos, where in T&T there are is­sues of safe­ty and in Bar­ba­dos they are say­ing we have cer­ti­fied it and you are not ac­cept­ing our lev­el of ex­per­tise," Row­ley added. He said that prob­lem could have been avoid­ed if the PP Gov­ern­ment was not try­ing to score po­lit­i­cal points 24 hours a day. "It was min­is­te­r­i­al talk­ing out of turn on this ap­pli­ca­tion that set this off on the wrong foot in the be­gin­ning. It has now be­come a Cari­com prob­lem," Row­ley in­sist­ed. Ear­li­er Row­ley said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so spoke out of turn when she an­nounced a pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish a re­gion­al sea trans­port ser­vice for Cari­com na­tion­als.

He said that should not have been an­nounced be­fore de­lib­er­a­tions on the pro­pos­als were com­plet­ed

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sim­ply mak­ing pub­lic re­la­tions state­ments in St Kitts. "It was a lit­tle pre­ma­ture," he said. Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter for not at­tend­ing a Cari­com meet­ing on the Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my re­cent­ly, opt­ing to stay at home and par­ty. He added: "It is not some­thing you could just come off a plane and hand Cari­com. You are not se­ri­ous about Cari­com. These are the kinds of things that be­lit­tle Cari­com. "Every time there is a Heads of Govt meet­ing you get things said and done which call in­to ques­tion the se­ri­ous­ness of our at­tempt to make the re­gion one eco­nom­ic unit."