Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he has filed his In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion de­c­la­ra­tions and doc­u­ment­ed the process so the pub­lic can see how it’s done.

The In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act re­quires pub­lic of­fi­cials like Au­gus­tine to sub­mit an­nu­al de­c­la­ra­tions of their in­come, as­sets, li­a­bil­i­ties, and reg­is­tra­ble in­ter­ests to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. This process pro­motes trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty among lead­ers.

Au­gus­tine was giv­en a court or­der last month to file his 2023 de­c­la­ra­tion with­in 30 days af­ter miss­ing the of­fi­cial May 31 dead­line. The High Court had warned that fail­ure to com­ply could lead to heavy fines or oth­er sanc­tions.

Speak­ing with re­porters on Fri­day, Au­gus­tine ex­plained the de­lay was due to the time-con­sum­ing na­ture of the process, not re­luc­tance to file. He said the pub­lic can ex­pect him to share the full process to help oth­ers un­der­stand the re­quire­ments.

“I have filed my de­c­la­ra­tions, and I ac­tu­al­ly doc­u­ment­ed the ex­pe­ri­ence, so you can ex­pect me to show pub­licly the en­tire process of what goes in­to fil­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion,” Au­gus­tine said.

Asked what caused the de­lay? He ex­plained at length the prac­ti­cal steps in­volved.

“There were sev­er­al things; it’s just a mat­ter of time, so it means go­ing to all the banks, it means go­ing through the form, writ­ing it up, get­ting it down to the of­fice in Port-of-Spain, if they have ques­tions, an­swer­ing those ques­tions and all of that,” he said.

“But I as­sure you I re­al­ly don’t have much to re­al­ly de­clare, so I made the time to do it. In fact, I went to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to­day and just came back from Port-of-Spain, so it’s just about mak­ing the time to sit down and ac­tu­al­ly do it.”

Au­gus­tine said that fil­ing the de­c­la­ra­tions in­volves more than fill­ing a sin­gle form; it re­quires vis­it­ing in­sti­tu­tions, prepar­ing pa­per­work, and an­swer­ing fol­low-up queries.

“It’s just about mak­ing the time to sit down and ac­tu­al­ly do it,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary con­firmed that he has now com­plet­ed the fil­ing in full.