For­mer PNM for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has con­demned the stand tak­en by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment would not help Cari­com coun­tries hit by Hur­ri­cane Tomas with­out ben­e­fits to T&T.Gopee-Scoon, in a lengthy re­lease yes­ter­day, said she found Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment some­what dis­con­cert­ing.

"My lev­el of dis­com­fort is re­lieved on­ly by the fact that it is still some­what ear­ly days and, at times, things said are of­ten mis­con­strued or maybe not meant," she said."It be­comes painful when we hear ut­ter­ances and state­ments and po­si­tions tak­en by this Gov­ern­ment which sug­gest some in­dif­fer­ence in the treat­ment of the Caribbean.

"State­ments like T&T is not an ATM card is sim­ply thought­less and undiplo­mat­ic."Gopee-Scoon said the can­cel­la­tion of the pur­chase of the off­shore pa­trol ves­sels and the as­sis­tance of radar sys­tems to the East­ern Caribbean showed a gen­er­al sort of de­tach­ment and non­cha­lance by the PP Gov­ern­ment to the Caribbean.

She said while T&T faced con­tin­u­ing eco­nom­ic de­cline, per­haps T&T's ini­tial re­sponse could have been to despatch with im­me­di­a­cy, an as­sess­ment team of ex­perts from the De­fence Force, Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

She said this team might have been able to de­ter­mine where T&T can as­sist in kind, rather than in cash, though a lit­tle of that would al­so go a long way."The Point Fortin MP said clear­ly there need­ed to be a well-ar­tic­u­lat­ed Caribbe`an for­eign pol­i­cy by which the present Gov­ern­ment could op­er­ate.

"And I wish to make strong over­tones to the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs to so ex­pose," she said. "One needs to keep close­ly, the in­ex­tri­ca­ble link of the Caribbean to T&T, for we are tru­ly in­sep­a­ra­ble, and it is more than sim­ply ge­og­ra­phy."She said it was well doc­u­ment­ed that Caribbean peo­ple have con­tributed to the de­vel­op­ment of our oil in­dus­try.

"When oil was com­mer­cialised some 100 years ago, per­sons from the is­lands came to T&T to be part of this en­er­gy process," she said.

Gopee-Scoon said Point Fortin was one of the ar­eas that was es­tab­lished through im­mi­grants from Caribbean is­lands who came to work in T&T's oil in­dus­try.

She said in 1921, 47,667 peo­ple came from oth­er is­lands and the fig­ure was dou­bled lat­er on."In short, they were the largest con­trib­u­tors to the pop­u­la­tion of T&T and the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of oil," she said.