Mi­nor­i­ty Leader of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Kelvon Mor­ris, has ac­cused the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of re­fus­ing to an­swer im­por­tant ques­tions re­lat­ed to key de­ci­sions in To­ba­go.

As a re­sult, he re­sort­ed to nam­ing and sham­ing THA mem­bers who have failed to an­swer ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 ques­tions dur­ing ple­nary sit­tings in the as­sem­bly leg­is­la­ture over the last two years.

Mor­ris out­lined sev­er­al ques­tions that have gone unan­swered re­gard­ing salaries and board po­si­tions, in­fra­struc­ture con­tracts, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment projects, and trav­el ex­pens­es, among oth­ers.

He said that these unan­swered ques­tions high­light the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­luc­tance to be held ac­count­able to the pub­lic. Mor­ris al­so crit­i­cised the Sec­re­tary of Tourism for fail­ing to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the CEO of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed and the al­leged re­scind­ing of ap­proved de­ci­sions.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Mor­ris raised is­sues over unan­swered ques­tions on the or­der pa­per, which nor­mal­ly in­cludes agen­da items for each sit­ting.

“We al­so ask the Chief Sec­re­tary about trav­el as in To­ba­go we are see­ing how they are leav­ing on fan­cy trips. We are see­ing them by the droves. Now they have got­ten so bold­face with it that they are now tak­ing their spous­es on trips. We are see­ing them go in­to Grena­da and you’re see­ing, while they should be at con­fer­ences, we are see­ing per­sons hav­ing a good ole time on tax­pay­ers funds and there­fore we, as a re­spon­si­ble mi­nor­i­ty, have asked the Chief Sec­re­tary to sim­ply tell us how much mon­ey has been spent on over­seas trav­el to this date,” he stat­ed.

Mor­ris re­vealed that one THA sec­re­tary had failed to an­swer some ques­tions by ask­ing for de­fer­rals, dat­ing back six months.

“Af­ter giv­ing the sec­re­taries, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer an as­sur­ance that this ques­tion will be an­swered, he then came and asked for a fur­ther de­fer­ral. Then in No­vem­ber, when it was time for ques­tions for sec­re­taries, ab­solute­ly none of the sec­re­taries who were sup­posed to an­swer ques­tions showed up,” Mor­ris claimed.

He named the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris; Sec­re­tary for Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sport Ter­rance Baynes; Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Trevor James; Nathisha Pan­tin Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment and main­ly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Mor­ris said, “There is a say­ing, Sa­tan can­not cor­rect sin, be­cause if you as the Chief Sec­re­tary is al­so not an­swer­ing ques­tions. Then how can you cor­rect your sub­or­di­nates and there­fore this Chief Sec­re­tary is one who con­tin­ues to dis­re­gard his du­ties to the peo­ple of To­ba­go. We have the Chief Sec­re­tary not an­swer­ing over nine ques­tions.”

Mor­ris said there seemed to be a clear strat­e­gy to not ac­count.

In Sep­tem­ber, Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor said she was dis­ap­point­ed with the num­ber of re­quests for de­fer­rals of ques­tions di­rect­ed to mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil. She called on the ex­ec­u­tive to do bet­ter.