Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is in­sist­ing he fired Dr Kei­th Row­ley from the Trade and In­dus­try Min­istry be­cause of his be­hav­iour and not be­cause of con­cerns raised by the Diego Mar­tin West MP over the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). Man­ning said that in re­sponse to a claim by Op­po­si­tion MP Ramesh Ma­haraj, who had said Row­ley and for­mer Arou­ca South MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (now High Com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da) were fired be­cause of their crit­i­cisms of Ude­cott. These de­vel­op­ments took place dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on a bill to val­i­date the work of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. Row­ley has main­tained he was fired be­cause of his call for Cab­i­net over­sight of the State-owned Ude­cott.

Dur­ing the de­bate, there was much crit­i­cism of Ude­cott by Op­po­si­tion MPs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ma­haraj. Man­ning said he was "de­ter­mined to stay out of a lot of the ole talk that is go­ing on in this mat­ter." He added: "If there is a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, the at­ti­tude of the Gov­ern­ment is to let the com­mis­sion do its work and when the com­mis­sion makes its find­ings, the Gov­ern­ment will take what­ev­er ac­tion it con­sid­ers ap­pro­pri­ate. That is the po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment." Man­ning did not end there, say­ing he want­ed to "cor­rect the mis­chief of the mem­ber for Tabaquite and that is that the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing a par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion, vis-a-vis Ude­cott.

"What the Gov­ern­ment was say­ing was that on the ba­sis of no ev­i­dence at all, in­di­vid­u­als in this Par­lia­ment were call­ing for this en­quiry when there was no ba­sis for it," Man­ning said. He said once there was ba­sis for the com­mis­sion the Gov­ern­ment would con­sid­er it. Man­ning said when that hap­pened the Gov­ern­ment agreed to the es­tab­lish­ment of the en­quiry. He stressed: "The Gov­ern­ment has been con­sis­tent on this mat­ter." Man­ning then turned his at­ten­tion to the sack­ing of Row­ley in 2007. "It is be­hav­iour. Peo­ple must learn how to be­have. That's the prob­lem," said Man­ning.