SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Kelvon Mor­ris says he is not sure yet whether he will con­test the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) in­ter­nal elec­tions for a To­ba­go coun­cil.

The par­ty will hold an in­ter­nal elec­tion on April 24 to fill all 17 ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions in the To­ba­go coun­cil. This comes af­ter a num­ber of its ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers re­signed fol­low­ing the par­ty’s 14-1 de­feat in the De­cem­ber 6 THA elec­tions.

Cur­rent po­lit­i­cal leader, Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine has said she does not in­tend to con­test the elec­tion, while for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary, An­cil Den­nis has said he will now con­test the post.

As ru­mours cir­cu­late about whether Mor­ris, who is now the lone-PNM rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the As­sem­bly, will al­so seek the po­lit­i­cal leader’s of­fice, he sought to give some an­swers dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day.

“I am hon­est­ly not in a po­si­tion to give an an­swer to­day, in fact com­ing out of the prayer ser­vice, I be­lieve I want some time to hon­est­ly take this mat­ter on a spir­i­tu­al lev­el where I would be able to seek the Almighty’s guid­ance, I’ll be do­ing some se­ri­ous pray­ing and fast­ing and I will al­low God to lead the way,” Mor­ris said.

Asked when he would be able to pro­vide a re­sponse, Mor­ris promised it would be be­fore the par­ty’s nom­i­na­tion day.

He urged par­ty mem­bers and To­bag­o­ni­ans alike to think about of­fer­ing them­selves for of­fice.

He al­so of­fered some ad­vice to those who do con­test the elec­tion.

“I al­so want to cau­tion the mem­bers of the PNM at this time as well, for us to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of uni­ty, un­der­stand the im­por­tance of to­geth­er­ness, un­der­stand the im­por­tance of team­work, un­der­stand the im­por­tance of ma­tu­ri­ty and al­so un­der­stand the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly.”

Mor­ris said while there will be com­pe­ti­tion for the po­si­tions, mem­bers should show re­spect, hon­esty and dig­ni­ty through­out the elec­tion.

Mor­ris al­so out­lined his plans to en­sure the PDP-led As­sem­bly was held ac­count­able by his of­fice.

He said he will be set­ting up a whistle­blow­er pro­gramme on the is­land.

“We want to launch some­thing called I-TELL­—a whistle­blow­er pro­gramme that would al­low per­sons anony­mous­ly and safe­ly log any con­cerns of mis­con­duct, malfea­sance and any is­sues with pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

Mor­ris said these com­plaints can be made both vir­tu­al­ly and by use of a drop­box at the front of his of­fice. He urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to make use of ei­ther plat­form to air their con­cerns.

“It mat­ters not who the in­for­ma­tion af­fects, we will con­tin­ue to up­hold the high­est stan­dards of in­tegri­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in pub­lic af­fairs and we en­cour­age all of To­ba­go to al­so hold true to those ideals, not be­cause you are a sup­port­er of red or a sup­port­er of black, we are say­ing to you come for­ward wher­ev­er wrong­do­ing lies, come for­ward with the in­for­ma­tion and we would en­sure it gets the rel­e­vant at­ten­tion,” Mor­ris said.

His of­fice will al­so con­tain a So­cial Sup­port and In­dus­tri­als Re­la­tions help desk to as­sist those who need fi­nan­cial sup­port or have dis­putes with their em­ploy­er.

“This will bring to bear both pub­lic and pri­vate re­sources to en­sure that we can give sup­port to the most vul­ner­a­ble in To­ba­go. There will be a phys­i­cal desk where you can come to the of­fice of the Mi­nor­i­ty leader and we will have an of­fi­cer specif­i­cal­ly to deal with those per­sons com­ing for sup­port and with is­sues re­lat­ing to in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions,” Mor­ris said.

Like the whistle­blow­er pro­gramme, there will al­so be a vir­tu­al plat­form to log com­plaints.

And Mor­ris does not plan to stop there.

He said, “We are launch­ing our 24-hour hot­line for all of To­ba­go to treat with any is­sue, it could be from your roads, all is­sues re­lat­ing to ser­vice and to en­sur­ing that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is held ac­count­able this 24 (hour) hot­line will be avail­able to you, this is where you can log is­sues and we will take it up with the ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

He an­nounced that he would be ask­ing the As­sem­bly to for­mu­late a work­force work-from-home pol­i­cy that can be used through­out the THA when the coun­cil meets on Feb­ru­ary 24.

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