Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty board, Mar­sha Bai­ley, says there has been no move by mem­bers to step down, de­spite Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit dou­bling down on her calls for their res­ig­na­tion.

“There has been no in­di­ca­tion of res­ig­na­tion,” Bai­ley said yes­ter­day, re­spond­ing to the min­is­ter’s de­mand dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas on Sun­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Mo­hit main­tained that stance, say­ing, “The Gov­ern­ment stands by our call for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the board based on their failed per­for­mance.”

At Sun­day’s brief­ing, Mo­hit de­scribed the au­thor­i­ty’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion as “deeply trou­bling,” at­tribut­ing it to al­leged pro­longed fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment and a lack of over­sight.

“To­day, I call for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the cur­rent board of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty now finds it­self mired in a se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle with li­a­bil­i­ties dat­ing as far back as 2020, re­port­ed­ly reach­ing in the vicin­i­ty of $77 mil­lion and count­ing,” the min­is­ter said.

How­ev­er, in a me­dia state­ment is­sued Sun­day, the board pushed back strong­ly against the al­le­ga­tions, say­ing it is “as­tound­ed” by the min­is­ter’s pub­lic state­ments and in­sist­ed that it has not been giv­en mean­ing­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­gage on the au­thor­i­ty’s af­fairs.

The board said since May 2025, it re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ed meet­ings with the line min­is­ter to ob­tain di­rec­tion, but re­ceived no re­sponse.

It said the on­ly in­ter­ac­tion was a brief five-minute meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 6 af­ter dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion had al­ready been tak­en over the non-pay­ment of statu­to­ry de­duc­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, a com­pre­hen­sive re­port on that dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was re­quest­ed by the min­is­ter and de­liv­ered with­in 24 hours.

Mo­hit had ear­li­er dis­closed that a min­istry au­dit un­cov­ered ma­jor fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $23 mil­lion owed to two se­cu­ri­ty firms, $8 mil­lion in gra­tu­ity pay­ments to em­ploy­ees, more than $1.5 mil­lion in staff health in­sur­ance, and mil­lions in un­paid statu­to­ry de­duc­tions.

She al­so al­leged that funds de­duct­ed from work­ers’ salaries had not been re­mit­ted to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIS) and the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR), with ar­rears ex­ceed­ing $6 mil­lion to the BIR and more than $4 mil­lion to the NIS as of Sep­tem­ber 2025.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter raised con­cerns that some res­i­den­tial cen­tres for chil­dren lacked guar­an­teed ac­cess to food, while the Au­thor­i­ty re­port­ed­ly pur­chased an ice mak­er cost­ing over $300,000.

She said no de­ci­sion had yet been tak­en on whether to re­fer the mat­ter to the po­lice.

In its re­sponse, the board said it had been pro­vid­ing the min­istry with rou­tine re­ports, con­firmed min­utes and up­dates out­lin­ing se­vere fund­ing short­falls, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the pas­sage of the 2026 na­tion­al Bud­get. These con­straints, it said, af­fect­ed per­son­nel costs, fos­ter care pay­ments, fa­cil­i­ty main­te­nance, in­fra­struc­ture up­grades, ex­pan­sion of the Na­tion­al Care and Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre, and pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices.

The board al­so stressed that day-to-day op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, fall un­der the au­thor­i­ty’s di­rec­tor/chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, who serves as ac­count­ing of­fi­cer un­der pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

Over the past 11 months, the board said it had not ben­e­fit­ed from the “stan­dard over­sight” of the line min­is­ter to help guide the au­thor­i­ty’s strate­gic di­rec­tion for 2026-2029 or ad­dress mount­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion, the board warned that pub­lic state­ments made with­out con­sul­ta­tion risk dam­ag­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and the pro­fes­sion­als work­ing with­in it.

“It is… re­gret­table that the min­is­ter’s pub­lic ut­ter­ances have the po­ten­tial to dam­age the im­age of the Au­thor­i­ty and the rep­u­ta­tion of the pro­fes­sion­als who serve on the board,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The board said de­spite the con­tro­ver­sy and fi­nan­cial strain, it re­mains com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing its man­date to pro­tect and care for T&T’s chil­dren.