Richard Lord

Chair­man of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion (EOC) Pro­fes­sor John La Guerre says in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the award of schol­ar­ships via the Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme un­der the for­mer Patrick Man­ning gov­ern­ment are still in progress and there is no fi­nal re­port. This was his re­sponse to a re­quest from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Wednes­day for a copy of the re­port. Con­tribut­ing to the 2012 bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said the re­port was a pub­lic doc­u­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar quot­ed ex­ten­sive­ly from it to show that the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment dis­crim­i­nat­ed against cit­i­zens un­der the pro­gramme. She said the re­port showed on­ly sev­en per cent of those grant­ed schol­ar­ships were of East In­di­an ori­gin.

Row­ley wrote the com­mis­sion on Oc­to­ber 19, a day af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rev­e­la­tions, re­quest­ing a copy of the re­port. La Guerre, in his one-page re­ply to Row­ley, said: "Please note that the com­plaint which re­sult­ed in the pro­duc­tion of the said re­port is still an on­go­ing mat­ter as the com­mis­sion has rec­om­mend­ed that this mat­ter be sent to con­cil­i­a­tion. "There­fore, the re­port can­not be dis­closed by the com­mis­sion at this time," he added. La Guerre said the com­plainant, Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, "ob­tained a copy of the said re­port pur­suant to the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) and as the com­plainant in this mat­ter." He re­vealed that the com­mis­sion "al­so sent a copy of the re­port to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment as the re­spon­dent in this mat­ter." Told by Row­ley that the re­port was put in the pub­lic do­main when its con­tents were read in Par­lia­ment by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, La Guerre said: "We wish to in­form you that we have writ­ten to the Par­lia­ment seek­ing in­for­ma­tion as to whether the re­port as a whole was ac­tu­al­ly laid in Par­lia­ment."