Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

?Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh faced off with jour­nal­ists at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence af­ter con­cerns were raised that Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters with more promi­nent port­fo­lios were evad­ing the me­dia at the week­ly con­fer­ence. Ques­tions from jour­nal­ists about the non-ap­point­ment of mem­bers to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) were shot down by Swarats­ingh. He said: "It al­ways amazes me that you choose to spend the (post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence) time think­ing about what you would want to ask a per­son (min­is­ter) who is (not present).

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, you do not get to make those de­ci­sions as to who comes to the post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence but in so far that there are min­is­ters avail­able to you, use the time to ask them a ques­tion or we can ad­journ the press con­fer­ence," he added. Swarats­ingh was re­spond­ing to calls for min­is­ters to im­press on their oth­er Cab­i­net col­leagues, such as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the im­por­tance of ad­dress­ing the shrouds of con­tro­ver­sy that sur­round­ed is­sues such as Ude­cott. "You were in Par­lia­ment and you were in Par­lia­ment for the last cou­ple of days with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al," he said.

He re­ceived sup­port from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid, who told jour­nal­ists that op­por­tu­ni­ties would arise at oth­er places for min­is­ters to be field ques­tions from the me­dia.