Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has pub­licly re­ject­ed for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s claim that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) re­quest­ed two Toy­ota Pra­dos in its ini­tial oil spill re­sponse bill, call­ing the state­ment false and mis­lead­ing.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Cas­tara on Wednes­day night, Au­gus­tine said the THA con­tin­ues to op­er­ate un­der se­vere fi­nan­cial con­straints.

“The THA is work­ing like how you build a house with lit­tle mon­ey. You buy ce­ment, you put up a piece, you get some steel, you put up a next piece,” Au­gus­tine said. “That is how we op­er­ate be­cause of how we are be­ing fund­ed.”

Row­ley, speak­ing at Good­wood Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day, claimed the first in­voice sub­mit­ted by the THA for oil spill re­lief in 2024 in­clud­ed a re­quest for two Pra­dos. He ac­cused the As­sem­bly of ini­tial­ly re­ject­ing help from cen­tral gov­ern­ment, on­ly to lat­er make “ex­trav­a­gant” de­mands.

“You are go­ing to clean up oil on the rock at Cove, how the hell two Pra­dos get on the bill?” Row­ley asked.

Au­gus­tine pushed back, in­sist­ing no ve­hi­cles were re­quest­ed for per­son­al use dur­ing the oil spill re­sponse. He al­so ques­tioned the source of Row­ley’s in­for­ma­tion.

“No Pra­do re­quest was made for the oil spill. Not a sin­gle Pra­do,” Au­gus­tine said. “We made re­quests to cov­er the cost of rent­ing ve­hi­cles be­cause we didn’t even have prop­er trans­porta­tion for our peo­ple on the ground.”

He ex­plained that the on­ly ma­jor ve­hi­cle ex­pense was rent­ing a car for THA’s Al­lan Stew­art, who had no work­ing ve­hi­cle as­signed to him at the time.

“We had to use my ve­hi­cle and oth­ers to get him from Ma­son Hall at 3 and 4 a.m. We sim­ply rent­ed a car so he could get to work,” Au­gus­tine said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so not­ed that while the U.S. gov­ern­ment do­nat­ed two off-du­ty Wran­glers for emer­gency use in Trinidad and To­ba­go, none were sent to To­ba­go.

“Not one came to To­ba­go. And they’re telling us, ‘It good so for you,’” he said. “To­bag­o­ni­ans, don’t be fooled,” the TPP Po­lit­i­cal Leader told sup­port­ers.

Au­gus­tine said he has not pur­chased a new ve­hi­cle since tak­ing of­fice and still us­es old­er ve­hi­cles in­her­it­ed from past ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“The Pra­do that does dri­ve me come from Fi­nance. It down right now. The BMW from Kelvin Charles not work­ing well. The Lexus from Orville—I still us­ing it. The AC not work­ing, and I paid with my own mon­ey to fix it,” he said.

He al­so crit­i­cised Row­ley for re­ly­ing on “What­sApp mes­sages” as ev­i­dence of the re­quest, and ac­cused Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert of set­ting Row­ley up for po­lit­i­cal em­bar­rass­ment.

“But you ain't see like Colm Im­bert set­ting you up be­cause you buss he throat and put a next man to be Prime Min­is­ter. You ain't see Colm Im­bert set­ting you up, boy? You are smarter than that, Mr Ex-Prime Min­is­ter,” Au­gus­tine added.

“Colm set­ting you up for the kill. He em­bar­rass­ing you in front of your own peo­ple. So what is this—Colm Im­bert sent you a What­sApp and that is your ev­i­dence? What stu­pid­ness is that? Well that is not your ev­i­dence. The ev­i­dence must come from what was sub­mit­ted by the THA to you.”

“All that goat milk you drink­ing not do­ing much for the brain,” he quipped.

THA Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts had pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied Row­ley’s claim, stat­ing that the THA sub­mit­ted a $300 mil­lion mid-year re­quest—in­clud­ing $153.5 mil­lion re­lat­ed to the oil spill—but on­ly re­ceived $50 mil­lion to cov­er ex­pens­es for Feb­ru­ary and March.