Gail Alexan­der

?Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas caused a stir in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day when his cell­phone went off sud­den­ly with the ring tone of a per­son shriek­ing. Ac­cord­ing to Par­lia­ment rules, all cell­phones on the per­son of MPs, mem­bers of the pub­lic and oth­ers in the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber must be off or on silent when ei­ther the Up­per or Low­er House of Par­lia­ment is in ses­sion. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie was on his legs pi­lot­ing the bill to val­i­date the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry when Du­mas' cell­phone went off loud­ly. "That sounds like a Chi­nese," quipped UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

The sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed loud laugh­ter from the Op­po­si­tion side and long stares from the Gov­ern­ment bench­es in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning (who was roused from "rest­ing his eyes") by the din. Du­mas jumped to his feet, grin­ning ashamed­ly and hur­ried out of the Cham­ber try­ing, some­what un­suc­cess­ful­ly, to turn the scream­ing phone off as he went. Du­mas re­turned af­ter ten min­utes to a pro­fu­sion of cam­era click­ing - pho­tog­ra­phers tak­ing pic­tures of him–as he sat down, point­ed­ly putting his phone in his jack­et pock­et. When Je­re­mie com­plet­ed his sub­mis­sion, House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan re­mind­ed peo­ple to keep their phones on silent or off. The in­ci­dent oc­curred in the pres­ence of stu­dents who were ob­serv­ing MPs, as they (stu­dents) pre­pared for next Mon­day's Youth Par­lia­ment de­bate.

Calls to Du­mas' cell­phone dur­ing the tea-break–to get an ex­pla­na­tion from him on the sit­u­a­tion–went unan­swered. And lat­er on, when Du­mas spoke he ex­pressed re­gret over his ring tone at the start of his re­sponse to a mo­tion of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance on the prob­lems of mi­grant Chi­nese work­ers em­ployed by a Chi­nese firm op­er­at­ing in T&T. It was brought by Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. Du­mas ad­mit­ted that his cell­phone "cre­at­ed a dis­tur­bance ear­li­er (and) I want to apol­o­gise for that mat­ter. My sin­cer­est apolo­gies, Mr Speak­er."