Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has promised to in­ves­ti­gate and re­solve re­ports of ac­cess is­sues at the To­ba­go Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice.

It has been re­port­ed that em­ploy­ees from that of­fice have been locked out of the sys­tem once again over the past few days. When this hap­pens, peo­ple on the is­land have dif­fi­cul­ty ac­cess­ing birth and death cer­tifi­cates, with some of them forced to trav­el to Trinidad to ac­cess these doc­u­ments.

At a press con­fer­ence in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said he was rather sur­prised at the news but as­sured that he would look in­to it im­me­di­ate­ly. This mir­rors an in­ci­dent from last year when the To­ba­go of­fice faced sim­i­lar ac­cess prob­lems.

At that time, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine called on Dr Row­ley and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Amour for help. Amour ad­mit­ted there was a le­gal mis­un­der­stand­ing that need­ed cor­rec­tion, which was then han­dled with ur­gency. The AG’s of­fice al­so spoke of an im­passe, which was brought to the at­ten­tion of a se­nior coun­sel.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ex­plained that a de­vel­op­ment emerged, iden­ti­fy­ing a le­gal prob­lem that need­ed ex­am­i­na­tion and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion. He fur­ther said he un­der­stands the in­con­ve­nience faced by the peo­ple of To­ba­go and is com­mit­ted to rec­ti­fy­ing the prob­lem.

At the time when Dr Row­ley said the mat­ter was re­ceiv­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion from the at­tor­ney gen­er­al, he al­so re­vealed it may re­quire the in­ter­ven­tion of the Cab­i­net.

Now that the is­sue has resur­faced, Dr Row­ley said, “This is sur­pris­ing to me, and I thought we had dealt with this com­pre­hen­sive­ly when it arose a few months ago.”

Yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley went on to re­call that the last im­passe “had to do with an in­ter­pre­ta­tion by some pub­lic ser­vant as to what the law per­mit­ted.”

He added, “We did in­tact rec­ti­fy it by hav­ing made sure we had the prop­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion and that To­ba­go’s ac­cess to the sys­tem was fa­cil­i­tat­ed.”

Dr Row­ley said he was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the is­sue is re­solved quick­ly to pre­vent fur­ther in­con­ve­nience to To­ba­go’s res­i­dents.