Richard Lord

To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter and MP for To­ba­go East Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin has been told by the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) to make an "un­con­di­tion­al apol­o­gy" to her con­stituents and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go for mis­us­ing a Gov­ern­ment cred­it card.

That in­struc­tion came from TOP's chair­man Stan­ley Beard, who crit­i­cised the min­is­ter's ac­tion in a state­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing. The cred­it card is­sue was raised by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Par­lia­ment two weeks ago in the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, Beard said TOP's Is­land Coun­cil "cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly con­demns the ap­par­ent mis­use of the Gov­ern­ment-is­sued cred­it card." He added: "This event sad­dens us all and we wel­come her full and un­con­di­tion­al apol­o­gy to both her con­stituents and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Beard said TOP was firm­ly com­mit­ted to re­solv­ing the mat­ter in the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy in pub­lic af­fairs and fi­nan­cial ac­count­abil­i­ty. "We will take every step to coun­sel and sup­port our rep­re­sen­ta­tive to en­sure this does not hap­pen again," he added. Baird said TOP had tak­en note of Al­leyne-Top­pin's po­si­tion on the mat­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly her ref­er­ence "to the nov­el­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with her first term in of­fice."

He said note al­so was tak­en of the pe­ri­od dur­ing which the al­leged dis­crep­an­cies oc­curred and "the fail­ure of sys­temic checks with­in the min­istry to have ar­rest­ed this mat­ter in its in­fan­cy." Al­leyne-Top­pin claimed she took cash ad­vances from the card be­cause she did not know it was a breach of the rules gov­ern­ing its use. She in­sist­ed all the cash with­drawn had been re­paid.

TOP leader Ash­worth Jack told the T&T Guardian the de­ci­sion to con­demn Al­leyne-Top­pin's ac­tion was "not a per­son­al at­tack against any in­di­vid­ual. "It was sim­ply a de­ci­sion not to com­pro­mise on the found­ing prin­ci­ples of the TOP," he ex­plained. Jack said Al­leyne-Top­pin was in­vit­ed to a meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter but was un­able to at­tend.

The To­ba­go Af­fairs Min­is­ter chalked up a $68,048.16 bal­ance on the cred­it card. Trans­ac­tions in­clud­ed cash ad­vances tak­en from ATMs through­out the coun­try for sums rang­ing from $3,500 to $200. Al­leyne-Top­pin al­so used the card to pay bills at var­i­ous lo­cal busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing Ru­by Tues­day ($804); Hy­att Re­gency (Trinidad) ($5,743, $3,522 and $1,699.19 and Bel­la For­ma Re­sorts ($2,433.25).

There are strict terms and con­di­tions for use of the card. No lo­cal cash ad­vances are to be made with it, al­though cash with­drawals are al­lowed while on of­fi­cial over­seas trav­el with charges for with­draw­al to be paid by the card hold­er. The cred­it card is for of­fi­cial over­seas trav­el and lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment ex­pens­es for Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and hold­ers of cer­tain of­fices un­der the purview of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion.