Renu­ka Singh

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is call­ing for greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go to han­dle the ca­reers of pub­lic ser­vants.

Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day gave the me­dia an up­date on his meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Au­gus­tine said he ques­tioned why some­one in Trinidad had to sign off on pub­lic ser­vant is­sues in To­ba­go.

“The Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, and so on, that does not op­er­ate out of To­ba­go we do not have con­trol over the Com­mis­sion, but there are some bug­bears with­in the sys­tem that need­ed some flesh­ing out and some dis­cus­sions on,” Au­gus­tine said.

One of those is­sues, Au­gus­tine said, was that To­ba­go was los­ing its se­nior pub­lic ser­vice ad­min­is­tra­tors to Trinidad where they are placed as per­ma­nent sec­re­taries.

“We looked at what we can do to keep them here, with­out them hav­ing to lose the pro­mo­tion­al val­ue of get­ting to an­oth­er place with­in the es­tab­lish­ment. All of these is­sues are crit­i­cal is­sues and is­sues that we would get some so­lu­tions on soon,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said that the two groups came up with some work­able so­lu­tions on some is­sues and oth­er is­sues need­ed more dis­cus­sions.

“Let me give you an ex­am­ple, the Cab­i­net mem­bers who were here seemed shocked and alarmed when some­one in To­ba­go ap­plies to get a boat reg­is­tered, it might take you six months to get it through the sys­tem,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said he al­so con­veyed to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net reps that there are on­ly four game war­dens in To­ba­go and one is close to re­tire­ment and that there is no firearms user cer­tifi­cate, where the THA ac­quires the firearm and the game war­dens use it and re­turn it to the THA.

He said that en­vi­ron­men­tal po­lice work from 8 am to 4 pm.

“I mean these are things which are re­al­ly out­side of the con­trol of the THA, well the Cab­i­net some­how did not know what was hap­pen­ing or was obliv­i­ous to it hap­pen­ing and so one of the im­me­di­ate things was why do we need some­one in Trinidad to sign off on reg­is­tra­tion on a boat? Why can’t that just hap­pen in the Di­vi­sion?” he asked.

Au­gus­tine said that it was “good” that the Cab­i­net mem­bers were sur­prised by the lim­its on the THA reach.

“I thought, good, let’s fix them now, let’s walk away from here with a re­solve ghat we are go­ing to fix these is­sues now,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said that the “strong res­o­lu­tion” ac­tu­al­ly works in favour of To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.

“Which is to say that these things that we are still de­pen­dent on pub­lic ser­vants in Trinidad to do for us that we can, in a very short time, be do­ing them right here in our own Di­vi­sions right here,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the THA has been run­ning like this for the past 21 years.

“It is just un­for­tu­nate that no­body brought it up be­fore or if it was brought up be­fore it was ig­nored be­fore, but these are crit­i­cal things,” Au­gus­tine said.