Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­proached Allyson West to take over the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion on Tues­day af­ter the de­ba­cle sur­round­ing his first pick—Garvin Si­mon­ette.

West con­firmed this on Wednes­day af­ter it was an­nounced that she had been as­signed to head the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter Mc­Don­ald was fired from the Min­istry ear­ly Mon­day.

West, an at­tor­ney and for­mer part­ner of ac­count­ing firm Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, was sworn in as a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, in June 2017 dur­ing a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle and had been put in charge of get­ting the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty off the ground among oth­er projects.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio be­came va­cant af­ter po­lice charged Mc­Don­ald, her com­pan­ion and three oth­ers on a to­tal of 56 al­leged cor­rup­tion charges. Mc­Don­ald is on sev­en charges.

Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tial choice for the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion post—Si­mon­ette—a PNM sen­a­tor de­clined the job on Mon­day af­ter his in­for­ma­tion of crim­i­nal charge of dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence (DUI) of al­co­hol he had in the US in 2014 be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia. He al­so re­signed from the Sen­ate.

Con­se­quent­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley as­sumed the port­fo­lio as he sought out an­oth­er re­place­ment not on­ly for the Min­istry but al­so in the Sen­ate.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion list­ed re­as­sign­ments with­in Gov­ern­ment:

• West as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, in ad­di­tion to her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance

• For­mer PNM Sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings re­turn­ing to the Sen­ate, re­plac­ing Si­mon­ette. Cum­mings was re­moved from the Sen­ate in Ju­ly to make room for Cox to be­come a Sen­a­tor.

• Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce ap­point­ed Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, his first gov­ern­ment job af­ter win­ning the seat in 2015.

West told the Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, “I’ve act­ed in Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore. That’s one of the rea­sons I wasn’t shocked when I got the call. That oc­ca­sion was a short stint and I didn’t get in­to the Min­istry’s nit­ty-grit­ty. So I’ll be sit­ting with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to get in­to the Min­istry’s work­ings. It’s an in­ter­est­ing port­fo­lio.”

She said one of the ar­eas where she thinks she can make a no­tice­able dif­fer­ence is in the In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT) space and I-Govt TT pro­gramme where T&T can do much. West added she was glad the as­sign­ment came be­fore Par­lia­ment re­sumes so she would have time to set­tle in.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance’s 2020 Bud­get plan­ning won’t be af­fect­ed by her ad­di­tion­al work­load since she said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter does the bulk of Bud­get plan­ning and she comes in at end of the process.

West said she reached out to Mc­Don­ald who was in hos­pi­tal on Wednes­day. “I ex­tend­ed an of­fer to help and wished her the best in her cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.”