ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

Wane “Wasp” Clarke is ex­pect­ed to be sworn in to­day as Sec­re­tary of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sport in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Clarke will re­ceive his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment from the Pres­i­dent dur­ing a short cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House. He re­places Joel Samp­son, who re­signed from the po­si­tion in May af­ter be­ing elect­ed as To­ba­go West MP in the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Clarke has been serv­ing as as­sis­tant sec­re­tary in the di­vi­sion and told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that his fo­cus would not be on rad­i­cal change but on con­tin­u­ing the work al­ready in mo­tion.

“I will not try to rein­vent the wheel. We just try to con­tin­ue some of the good things that we had go­ing,” he said.

“And I think most im­por­tant­ly,” he said, “is pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with­in the di­vi­sion, be­cause I hon­est­ly think that we can do a lot more if we just work to­geth­er.”

The sec­re­tary po­si­tion has been va­cant for near­ly three months. Short­ly af­ter Samp­son’s res­ig­na­tion, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine con­firmed that a re­place­ment had al­ready been iden­ti­fied, but for­mal­i­ties need­ed to be com­plet­ed be­fore the name could be made pub­lic.

Au­gus­tine said at the time that the process of ap­point­ing a new sec­re­tary re­quires le­gal and pro­ce­dur­al steps, in­clud­ing con­fir­ma­tion by the Pres­i­dent.

Now that Clarke has been of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed for the post, he says he is ready to take on the added re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“It’s a good feel­ing,” he said. “But more im­por­tant­ly, it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do that bit more and to push To­ba­go.”

Clarke’s el­e­va­tion to sec­re­tary is not ex­pect­ed to bring ma­jor shifts with­in the di­vi­sion, which over­sees a wide range of pro­grammes in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ty grants, youth de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives, and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties across the is­land.

While he did not out­line spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy plans, Clarke said his goal is to get more done by en­cour­ag­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion among staff and stake­hold­ers.