Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says there is no re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion at state-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG). Per­sad-Bisses­sar said so dur­ing yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on her re­turn from the Unit­ed States. In seek­ing to reaf­firm her Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the free­dom of the press in T&T, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Mo­hammed's re­moval was sim­ply part of a re­align­ment of staff at CN­MG.

She in­sist­ed it had "noth­ing to do with free­dom of the press."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was con­cerned about the "ex­ces­sive amount of mon­ey" be­ing spent at the state-owned net­work with­out "nec­es­sar­i­ly get­ting op­ti­mum per­for­mances out of CN­MG." She said the CN­MG man­age­ment was man­dat­ed "to do a re­align­ment, a re­struc­tur­ing and cost-cut­ting ex­er­cise."

The PM in­sist­ed Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment was not ter­mi­nat­ed. "He was in­formed that there would be fur­ther dis­cus­sions with re­spect to plac­ing him where they found that his com­pe­ten­cies would be best," Per­sad-Bisses­sar added. She said sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple were al­so ex­pect­ed to be re­moved from cer­tain po­si­tions last Mon­day. (RL)