Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine is re­fus­ing to take any blame for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Tourism Di­vi­sion spend­ing $2.5 mil­lion on a failed zi­pline project for Main Ridge, say­ing her role then as sec­re­tary was to set pol­i­cy and en­sure pub­lic ser­vants got mon­ey for projects they were pur­su­ing.

In fact, David­son-Ce­les­tine put the blame for the project’s fail­ure square­ly on pub­lic ser­vants’ shoul­ders, as she de­fend­ed her­self in the face of crit­i­cism af­ter an Au­di­tor Gen­er­al de­part­ment re­port re­vealed the on­ly thing the THA ac­tu­al­ly got for the ex­pen­di­ture was some rope.

Speak­ing on Wednes­day night at a cam­paign meet­ing in Canaan, David­son-Ce­les­tine, who was sec­re­tary of tourism when the High An­gle Canopy Course project was launched in 2015, said she was not at fault.

“As I know it, a sec­re­tary’s role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is that of pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion and it is through the process there will be pol­i­cy and pro­grammes and we find when the mem­bers of staff would come with pro­grammes and pro­pos­als, we will go through the process to en­sure that the fund­ing is avail­able for the mem­ber of staff to im­ple­ment the project at the end of the day,” David-Ce­les­tine told sup­port­ers.

Leader of the PNM’s Tobago Council, Tracy Davidson -Celestine, as she addressed supporters in Canaan on Wednesday’s night meeting.

PHOTO COURTESY PNM FACEBOOK PAGE

The woman who is seek­ing to be­come the THA’s first fe­male Chief Sec­re­tary, made it clear it was the fail­ure of pub­lic ser­vants that caused the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment to red flag the zi­pline is­sue.

She said, “All they are do­ing is call­ing na­tion­al at­ten­tion, call­ing in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to the fact that pub­lic ser­vants do not yet know how to doc­u­ment their work prop­er­ly. But more than that, they are be­hav­ing as though our pub­lic ser­vants in the THA are the worst in T&T and the worst in the rest of the Caribbean.”

On No­vem­ber 12 last year, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment wrote a let­ter to the THA’s Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor on the find­ings of the au­dit. That let­ter was signed by act­ing Au­dit Di­rec­tor Ali­cia Bai­ley-Job.

On page 15 of the let­ter, the is­sues sur­round­ing the pro­posed course at the Main Ridge in To­ba­go were high­light­ed.

“A ser­vice agree­ment dat­ed 12 June 2015 showed that the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion con­tract­ed with a British Vir­gin Is­land cor­po­ra­tion lo­cat­ed at Tor­to­la to de­sign, de­vel­op and con­struct a “High An­gle” Canopy Tour Course in the Main Ridge at an ini­tial cost of US$ 531,610,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al not­ed, how­ev­er, that no ap­proval was pre­sent­ed from the THA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil for the es­tab­lish­ment of the fa­cil­i­ty.

A to­tal of $2,511,210.20 was paid to the THA for “ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment; how­ev­er the ex­is­tence of these as­sets was not ver­i­fied,” the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port stat­ed.

“A vis­it to the Stores sec­tion of the Di­vi­sion re­vealed on­ly some ropes on hand,” the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al said.

On June 23, 2015, the THA paid $1,765,469.10 for “70 per cent of ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment for Canopy project” and just over four months lat­er, on Oc­to­ber 27, 2015, a fur­ther $745,741.10 was paid for the re­main­ing 30 per cent of ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment for the project, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s let­ter added.

The is­sue has been raised on the cam­paign plat­form by PDP deputy leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who has called on David­son-Ce­les­tine to step down if she can­not pro­duce the miss­ing funds to To­bag­o­ni­ans.

On Wednes­day night, David­son-Ce­les­tine ac­cused the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) of try­ing to do to her what politi­cians were not pre­pared to do to one an­oth­er in Trinidad and to blame her for a project’s fail­ure.

“But when you look and as­sess the sit­u­a­tion in the con­text of To­ba­go and in the con­text of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is on­ly in To­ba­go that the op­po­si­tion tries to take these re­ports and link any politi­cian and mem­ber of staff to any un­to­ward process­es in a di­vi­sion,” David­son-Ce­les­tine said.

“I have read au­dit­ed re­ports from min­istries in Trinidad, no politi­cian was blamed for it, no mem­ber of staff in any di­vi­sion was blamed for it … all they ac­knowl­edge was with­in the func­tions of gov­ern­ment there are sys­tem­at­ic chal­lenges at the end of the day and in or­der to progress and to move for­ward, we have to en­sure we are able to ad­dress those sys­tem­at­ic re­ports.”

She rub­bished con­cerns about the re­port, say­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al had sim­ply sent a man­age­ment let­ter, which is a doc­u­ment writ­ten to a mem­ber of staff in a par­tic­u­lar di­vi­sion in­di­cat­ing that through the au­dit­ing process, they did not re­ceive some in­for­ma­tion and in or­der to make a rea­son­able con­clu­sion about the state of af­fairs of the di­vi­sion, they need ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion.

“What the man­age­ment let­ter is say­ing to staff is that we came, we saw and we need ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion in or­der to come to a con­clu­sion about the op­er­a­tion of the re­spec­tive di­vi­sions or the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. A man­age­ment let­ter is not a fi­nal re­port,” she thun­dered.

David­son-Ce­les­tine added: “It does not in­di­cate there is any­thing un­to­ward in terms of any po­lit­i­cal wrong­do­ing. There­fore, any at­tempt to make any judge­ment and as­cribe any­thing un­to­ward to any in­di­vid­ual at this point in time is disin­gen­u­ous ladies and gen­tle­men.”

She ac­cused the PDP of at­tempt­ing to em­bar­rass pub­lic ser­vants and en­cour­aged them to ‘rise up and put this be­hav­iour once and for all with a vote on Jan­u­ary 25th.

Jan­u­ary 25 is elec­tion day for a new As­sem­bly in To­ba­go.