Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says leg­is­la­tion to amend the ex­ist­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment arrange­ments are to be brought to Par­lia­ment soon for ap­proval.He made the com­ment in his first in­ter­view af­ter he was sworn in as the coun­try's sev­enth Prime Min­is­ter at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, yes­ter­day.

Row­ley, who led the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment to a 23-18 vic­to­ry in a par­lia­men­tary elec­tion on Mon­day, said the rest of his Cab­i­net would be sworn in to­mor­row morn­ing. He said he in­tend­ed to keep an elec­tion promise to have a small­er Cab­i­net than the one led by for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"There will be some or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chal­lenges but there will be no over­whelm­ing shift­ing of the ground," he said, adding that "what we are tak­ing out are the min­is­ters, what you are go­ing to see are big­ger min­istries but small­er in num­ber (min­is­ters). "He said he ex­pect­ed that "about eight or ten of the ex­ist­ing min­is­te­r­i­al sub-di­vi­sions will be merged in­to oth­er min­istries."

Those changes "will bring about greater or­der with­in the Cab­i­net. It will re­duce costs some­what and it will al­low those who in­ter­act with min­istries to be more fo­cussed," he added.

Row­ley al­so said there would be about eight or ten min­is­ters less, in terms of spe­cif­ic min­istries and his Cab­i­net would com­prise about eight to ten few­er min­is­ters. The for­mer PP cab­i­net was in ex­cess of 30 min­is­ters.He said the new Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing apace to pre­pare the 2016 na­tion­al bud­get and that the new Fi­nance Min­is­ter would work with what had been pre­pared by mem­bers of the pub­lic ser­vice.

"The bud­get doc­u­ments will take pri­or­i­ty. We have to get the bud­get out of the way," he added.He said the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill 2016 "will be the first piece (of leg­is­la­tion to be brought to Par­lia­ment) be­cause that is a re­quire­ment of the law." This is so be­cause the bud­get must be ap­proved no lat­er than by Oc­to­ber 31.

Row­ley said the Par­lia­ment should be con­vened in "about two weeks" and once that was com­plet­ed "we will be­gin to ap­proach the Par­lia­ment with some of the com­mit­ments we have made be­fore."He said one of the "ma­jor pack­ages of leg­is­la­tion" would deal with lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form while whis­tle blow­er leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect wit­ness­es and to en­sure ev­i­dence was avail­able to con­vict ac­cused mur­der­ers would al­so be brought to the Par­lia­ment short­ly.

Deal­ing with the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, which was ap­proved un­der the for­mer gov­ern­ment, Row­ley said the new PNM Gov­ern­ment "will make an amend­ment to that piece of leg­is­la­tion and im­ple­ment it very quick­ly." He al­so said leg­is­la­tion to en­sure To­ba­go gets a prop­er sys­tem of in­ter­nal self gov­ern­ment will be dis­cussed in Cab­i­net short­ly and then tak­en to the pub­lic for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions and then tak­en to Par­lia­ment for ap­proval.

Ex­plain­ing why Faris Al-Rawi was cho­sen to be the AG, Row­ley said what was re­quired was "a rel­a­tive­ly ex­pe­ri­enced per­son with the en­er­gy to do the job and Mr Al-Rawi has been cho­sen (and) I have a great con­fi­dence in him and his team."

Row­ley said he would be giv­en a team to work with him "and we will move for­ward with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice be­ing the guardian of the rights of all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."He said be­cause of the ap­point­ment Al-Rawi was no longer his per­son­al at­tor­ney. Al-Rawi al­so stepped down as PNM PRO.

He said the Gov­ern­ment would try to get the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion for all its leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment.

"We will seek to en­gage the Op­po­si­tion to have them on board." He said if it was not co-op­er­at­ing the Gov­ern­ment would at­tempt to se­cure pas­sage of the bills if pos­si­ble," he said.