Michelle Loubon

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Orville Lon­don, says the new Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment rais­es some red flags but he was not in a po­si­tion to com­ment any fur­ther yet. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Lon­don said: "The name is trou­bling and the ti­tle is trou­bling and it does raise some red flags. "The ti­tle and the com­ments from top-rank­ing mem­bers are send­ing out some red flags.

"I don't want to com­ment and cri­tique it un­til I have a clear­er idea. I would like to see how things evolve." He main­tained the THA did wield sig­nif­i­cant pow­er in ac­cor­dance with Act 40 of 1996. "One of the things I can as­sure you is we recog­nise the THA does give sig­nif­i­cant pow­er. It will not be un­der­mined by any­body or any sit­u­a­tion that is not ne­go­tiable," added Lon­don. For­mer MP for To­ba­go East Ren­nie Du­mas had de­scribed the new Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment as a "cu­ri­ous crea­ture." While Lon­don made ref­er­ence to red flags, he pre­sent­ed an olive branch to new­ly-ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Lon­don said: "I in­tend to write the PM and of­fer my con­grat­u­la­tions to Kam­la and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. "I would rec­om­mend the qual­i­ty of the col­lab­o­ra­tions be main­tained in or­der to de­rive op­ti­mum ben­e­fits." He said much of To­ba­go's de­vel­op­ment would de­pend on the THA. He added: "We would want to con­tin­ue to be treat­ed with the dig­ni­ty and re­spect we de­serve." Lon­don said his ad­min­is­tra­tion worked with for­mer Prime Min­is­ters Bas­deo Pan­day and Patrick Man­ning. "For 2010, we ex­pect we would get that same de­gree of re­spect. We in­tend to col­lab­o­rate with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and we ex­pect to main­tain a mu­tu­al re­spect with the PM and its mem­bers," added Lon­don.