Richard Lord

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald will speak out in Par­lia­ment to­day on the con­tro­ver­sial Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme, which is ad­min­is­tered by her min­istry. This was re­vealed by Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. Im­bert's an­nounce­ment was made dur­ing a re­sponse to a ques­tion on the is­sue by Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh. Swarats­ingh said the is­sue was "not dis­cussed" at Cab­i­net. Im­bert then ad­vised that Mc­Don­ald "has been man­dat­ed to make a state­ment in Par­lia­ment to­mor­row on this mat­ter. "So I sug­gest you hold your fire, have a lit­tle pa­tience, wait un­til to­mor­row," he added.

Mc­Don­ald is ex­pect­ed to give the en­tire his­to­ry of the pro­gramme. She is al­so ex­pect­ed to say that the ini­tia­tive was con­ceived af­ter Bri­an Lara's record-break­ing 375 runs in a Test match against Eng­land in 1994 in An­tigua. Mc­Don­ald is ex­pect­ed to tell Par­lia­ment that there was a pub­lic out­cry for such a fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance pro­gramme to as­sist na­tion­als since that time. Her state­ment comes in the wake of pub­lic crit­i­cism of the pro­gramme by chair­man of the In­do-Trin­ba­go Equal­i­ty Coun­cil De­vant Ma­haraj. Ma­haraj se­cured de­tails of the pro­gramme un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. At least three jour­nal­ists and mem­bers of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) have been grant­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance un­der the pro­gramme.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the mat­ter dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Swarats­ingh said he want­ed to ex­plain for "the umpteenth time" that his min­istry is­sued schol­ar­ships while the Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­istry is­sued bur­saries. He said the schol­ar­ships were all ad­ver­tised and based on mer­it. He said the ap­pli­ca­tion must be con­sid­ered by a schol­ar­ship se­lec­tion com­mit­tee, which will then make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion. Swarats­ingh said fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance was grant­ed to de­serv­ing na­tion­als by the Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­istry which, he said, was the ap­pro­pri­ate place for such a pro­gramme. He stressed that there was a clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween the two mat­ters. "When the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty refers to schol­ar­ships, it is not what Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment has been do­ing, they have been grant­i­ng fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to cit­i­zens of T&T of which all cit­i­zens can ap­ply for," Swarats­ingh said.