Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der, is deny­ing any wrong­do­ing af­ter re­ceiv­ing some crit­i­cism for us­ing his per­son­al Face­book page to ad­ver­tise jobs in the con­struc­tion sec­tor in the cap­i­tal.

Alexan­der as­serts that the post was mere­ly to as­sist peo­ple in the con­stituen­cy of Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West find mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment and is not a con­flict of in­ter­est with his min­is­te­r­i­al work as the con­struc­tion project is not af­fil­i­at­ed with him­self or the gov­ern­ment.

He al­so seems to have the back­ing of his Prime Min­is­ter who said, “what­ev­er he does on his per­son­al time and in his per­son­al life is his busi­ness as long as it’s with­in the law.”

On his pri­vate Face­book page on May 25, Alexan­der post­ed, “We are look­ing for Con­struc­tion Work­ers for a project lo­cat­ed in the vicin­i­ty of Port of Spain. If you are in­ter­est­ed, please fill out the form be­low.”

At­tached is a google doc­u­ment link ti­tled, “Con­struc­tion Work­er ap­pli­ca­tion form.”

The form asks for per­son­al in­for­ma­tion such as name, phone num­ber, Email, a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter, and a na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber.

For­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is strong­ly crit­i­cised the so­cial me­dia post call­ing it “dotish­ness pass­ing for gov­ern­ment.”

“ As a for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter, I find it deeply con­cern­ing that a sit­ting Min­is­ter would in­volve him­self in this man­ner, un­der the guise of act­ing in a pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty. There can be ab­solute­ly no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this ac­tion, as there must be a clear sep­a­ra­tion. Pub­lic of­fice de­mands a clear sep­a­ra­tion from any per­son­al in­ter­est in trade or busi­ness. Min­is­ters must hold them­selves to the high­est stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty and en­sure their ac­tions do not com­pro­mise the so called in­tegri­ty of the gov­ern­ment,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

She added, “This typ­i­fies the hypocrisy of a Gov­ern­ment that seeks to al­leged­ly pro­tect the pub­lic from an artiste whose mu­sic you could choose to ig­nore, whilst foist­ing on the pub­lic a Speak­er of the House who was pre­vi­ous­ly jailed and even­tu­al­ly ex­on­er­at­ed by the same Privy Coun­cil that ex­on­er­at­ed the artiste.”

Mean­while one per­son com­ment­ing on Alexan­der’s Face­book post said, “you seem to not know your role and func­tion. This post will be wrong if it is ei­ther a Gov­ern­ment thing or Pri­vate. You are now a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment and for God’s sake car­ry your­self like one.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­ceived an email from a con­cerned cit­i­zen which ques­tioned whether Alexan­der breached pro­to­col and pub­lic trust.

The email added, “This is not on­ly high­ly ir­reg­u­lar but rais­es the ques­tion of whether such ac­tiv­i­ty is legal­ly and eth­i­cal­ly per­mis­si­ble for a sit­ting Cab­i­net min­is­ter. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, of­fi­cial re­cruit­ment re­lat­ed to pub­lic projects or gov­ern­ment-fund­ed work must be con­duct­ed through es­tab­lished, trans­par­ent chan­nels such as the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion or recog­nised state agen­cies.”

Alexan­der and his fam­i­ly run a prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said the jobs in ques­tion are not re­lat­ed to him­self or the gov­ern­ment.

“A con­trac­tor on a big project un­der con­struc­tion in the north of Port of Spain now. I was talk­ing to them, telling them that you know we’re try­ing to gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment for our con­stituents in Port of Spain North/ St Ann’s West, Gon­za­les, Bel­mont, etc and they said we’re ac­tu­al­ly look­ing for work­ers right now so if you want to or­ga­nize and send work­ers to us we can help you out. So that’s what that post was for,” he ex­plained.

Alexan­der con­test­ed that seat un­der the ban­ner of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) dur­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tion as part of the UNC’s Coali­tion of In­ter­est. He lost to the PNM’s Stu­art Young.

“I was act­ing as a con­stituen­cy care­tak­er, not as a min­is­ter, seek­ing the in­ter­est of my con­stituents, try­ing to get them jobs,” Alexan­der posit­ed.

He added, “The elec­tions may be over, but my rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the peo­ple is not. And I didn’t think that it was in any way con­tra­dic­to­ry to my role as a Min­is­ter be­cause it is not ei­ther my pri­vate busi­ness or gov­ern­ment busi­ness. It is just me re­fer­ring work­ers to a con­trac­tor.”

Alexan­der said his pri­vate Face­book page gets “mil­lions of views” and he thought it was the best ve­hi­cle to get the in­for­ma­tion out.

He said he spoke with his line min­is­ter David Lee who told Alexan­der that if he was con­cerned about the post then he should re­fer it to the Prime Min­is­ter.

As it re­lates to his fam­i­ly’s prop­er­ty-de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny Alexan­der said, “all of our con­struc­tion work was ful­ly stopped when I was ap­point­ed. And I am in the process of hav­ing all di­rec­tor­ships out of my name and trans­fer­ring it to oth­er peo­ple. But we have no work go­ing on, no busi­ness go­ing on that I could be a part of.”

Asked for his opin­ion on the mat­ter, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee said, “I spoke to Min­is­ter Alexan­der about this and based on his dis­cus­sion with me, it has noth­ing to do with the HDC (Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion) or any gov­ern­ment min­istry of state an­gency.”

Mean­while a for­mer Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary speak­ing un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty told Guardian Me­dia that the con­fu­sion just­ly arose be­cause Alexan­der used the word “we” in his post and now with his min­is­te­r­i­al role peo­ple will as­sume “we” means the min­istry he is ap­point­ed to.

Asked if he should have word­ed the post with more clar­i­ty to avoid am­bi­gu­i­ty, Alexan­der said, “Be­cause of the na­ture of the project and the con­trac­tor it was dif­fi­cult to pub­li­cize the de­tails. Our role was to for­ward in­ter­est­ed per­sons to them and those who met the cri­te­ria would have been con­tact­ed. There are a lot of peo­ple out of work in Bel­mont and Gon­za­les and this would have been a life chang­er for most of them as this project is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate em­ploy­ment for at least five years we were told. It’s nei­ther a pub­lic works project nor my pri­vate busi­ness, it’s me in my ca­pac­i­ty as con­stituen­cy care­tak­er for Port of Spain North St. Ann’s West look­ing out for my con­stituents.”