Carisa Lee

For the first time since be­ing sworn in as Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine has of­fi­cial­ly met with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The two had break­fast on Sun­day at Dr Row­ley’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in Blenheim, To­ba­go.

“We had a con­ver­sa­tion that was meant to break the ice,” Far­ley Au­gus­tine said.

On De­cem­ber 6, Au­gus­tine’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) de­feat­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) 14-1 in the THA elec­tions.

Au­gus­tine was at the View­port Su­per­mar­ket yes­ter­day, where he was the fea­tured speak­er at the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2021 Peo­ple’s Choice Award for In­de­pen­dent Su­per­mar­ket.

He said their meet­ing was a wel­comed start to their pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship.

“You could ve­he­ment­ly op­pose some­one’s po­lit­i­cal philoso­phies and still find a way to be cor­dial with that per­son,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said while he and the Prime Min­is­ter shared some laughs they al­so spent over two hours dis­cussing To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and the needs and re­quire­ment of the is­land.

“We did at some point do some as­sess­ment of where as an is­land we have gone wrong in the past, what the suc­cess­es are and the things we can build up­on. We did speak to some of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment projects on the is­land and the kind of sup­port that will be need­ed,” he ex­plained.

He said they had a good start to the reg­u­lar meet­ings re­quired be­tween them by law and he al­ready has a top­ic that may be on the agen­da for their next meet­ing - the high food prices on the is­land.

“It’s an is­sue that has to be ad­dressed and it is a glob­al is­sue,” the Chief Sec­re­tary added.

Au­gus­tine said with the in­crease of freight costs and the in­con­sis­ten­cy of ship­ping, im­port­ed food prices have sky­rock­et­ed. He said some of these fac­tors are out­side the reach of the As­so­ci­a­tion and the pro­pri­etors there may be some­thing Gov­ern­ment can do.

“A lot of the fac­tors re­quire Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to try to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion…how we could just mea­sure it in a way that makes food avail­able es­pe­cial­ly ba­sic food avail­able to all,” he said.

Far­ley said more sec­tors of the econ­o­my need to re­open and it should be be­yond Car­ni­val.

“I don’t see how we could be hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about Car­ni­val events but we can’t have a con­ver­sa­tion about open­ing the beach to 6 pm. To me the log­ic of that just does not make sense...it baf­fles my mind,” he said.

He said dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing and he knows that those in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try have suf­fered but they are not the on­ly ones.

Far­ley said they don’t want to lock out the un­vac­ci­nat­ed from the econ­o­my and re­it­er­at­ed his po­si­tion of vac­ci­na­tion be­ing a choice.

On Fri­day po­lit­i­cal leader of the PDP, Wat­son Duke re­vealed that he took the vac­cine.

“The same kind of ef­fort and work that went in­to mem­bers of the team work­ing with Mr Duke from where he was and in­flu­enc­ing him, and con­vinc­ing him, and ed­u­cat­ing him and get­ting him and his fam­i­ly to a place of tak­ing the vac­cine is that same kind of work that we are go­ing to be do­ing on the ground in To­ba­go,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the THA’s vac­ci­na­tion rate is sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der their goal and on­ly 24,000 peo­ple took the jab on the is­land. He said this can af­fect work on the is­land.

“At this mo­ment we are con­sid­er­ing the mat­ter of cruise ship but here is the re­al­i­ty that To­bag­o­ni­ans have to face these en­ti­ties they are com­ing with peo­ple who are all 100 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed when they want on­ly to be served by vac­ci­nat­ed ser­vice providers,” he ex­plained.