Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says it is “a sad state” that the fi­nal rest­ing place of the coun­try’s first pres­i­dent and prime min­is­ter from To­ba­go, ANR Robin­son, ap­pears un­kempt and with­out reg­u­lar main­te­nance.

“When the THA got in­to of­fice, we sort of fixed the gravesite up and made it pre­sentable, but it is clear that no one goes and ac­tive­ly main­tains it,” Au­gus­tine re­vealed to the me­dia yes­ter­day when asked about the cur­rent con­di­tion of the gravesite.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the grave at the Scar­bor­ough Methodist Church in Ba­co­let yes­ter­day, there were vis­i­ble signs of ne­glect. Weeds and grass had grown around the grave en­trance. The over­growth gave the im­pres­sion the space not reg­u­lar­ly tend­ed.

Au­gus­tine said while the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly pre­vi­ous­ly stepped in to clean and re­store the site, on­go­ing main­te­nance has not been con­sis­tent.

“I’m not sure if there are fam­i­ly mem­bers that are around and avail­able,” he said. “That is not a pub­lic ceme­tery; that is ac­tu­al­ly a ceme­tery be­long­ing to a church. So un­like pub­lic ceme­ter­ies, where the State will have work­ers there, at a church ceme­tery, which is pri­vate, we don’t nor­mal­ly have work­ers there.”

De­spite this, Au­gus­tine said he has giv­en new in­struc­tions for the THA to act, even though it falls out­side their of­fi­cial re­mit.

“Giv­en the sor­ry state that it is now, I have asked that the THA go be­yond its usu­al du­ty just to take care of it un­til we fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing there and whether or not the fam­i­ly can, in fact, main­tain it. But we would pre­fer it not to sit in that con­di­tion.”

Arthur Napoleon Ray­mond (ANR) Robin­son served as prime min­is­ter from 1986 to 1991 and lat­er as pres­i­dent from 1997 to 2003. He was al­so the first chair­man of the THA from 1980 to 1986 and is re­gard­ed as the first mod­ern Chief Sec­re­tary. He is al­so one of To­ba­go’s most in­flu­en­tial po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and was in­stru­men­tal in the cre­ation of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court.

Au­gus­tine’s com­ments came dur­ing a me­dia in­ter­view yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for the new Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Sports Sec­re­tary.