Gail Alexan­der

In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal yes­ter­day quashed ru­mours that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had "col­lapsed," while at­tend­ing the cur­rent Cari­com lead­ers con­fer­ence in Guyana and had to be tak­en to Cu­ba for med­ical at­ten­tion.

Be­fore the start of yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Parsan­lal an­nounced to re­porters: "Be­fore you ask me about it, let me cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­ny that any such thing has hap­pened. There is no truth to the ru­mour cir­cu­lat­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter has col­lapsed in Guyana." Parsan­lal said a ru­mour had been mak­ing the rounds about Man­ning's al­leged "col­lapse." He said Man­ning was fine and ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing at the Cari­com con­fer­ence. This be­gan on Thurs­day and ends on Sun­day.

Parsan­lal said Man­ning will stick to the sched­ule which was an­nounced to the me­dia on Wednes­day and will re­turn home af­ter the Cari­com con­fer­ence as planned. Al­so as planned, Man­ning will then leave im­me­di­ate­ly for Cu­ba or his tri-month­ly med­ical check-up. On an­oth­er mat­ter, Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said costs were cur­rent­ly be­ing quan­ti­fied at the Cari­com con­fer­ence on Man­ning's re­cent­ly-re­vealed plan to help St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Do­mini­ca and Grena­da.

Man­ning had re­vealed pro­pos­als to as­sist these and oth­er Cari­com is­lands by build­ing fa­cil­i­ties on in their ter­ri­to­ries to as­sist their economies and pro­vide jobs. If not, Man­ning had said, T&T stood to suf­fer from an in flux of re­gion­al mi­grants and this coun­try would "pay in blood." He had al­lud­ed to a dry dock yard for St Vin­cent, a jet main­te­nance fa­cil­i­ty in Grena­da, alu­mini­um arrange­ments with Ja­maica and pur­chase of ag­gre­gate from Do­mini­ca. Man­ning had said he would dis­cuss the ideas with re­gion­al gov­ern­ments. Yes­ter­day, Im­bert said Man­ning is do­ing just that at the cur­rent Cari­com con­fer­ence. Im­bert said the plans were on­ly at con­cept stage. The fi­nanc­ing and by whom will be worked out, he added.