To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the As­sem­bly will not bear the cost of the pri­vate char­tered flight or­gan­ised by As­sem­bly­man Trevor James from Mar­tinique to To­ba­go over the week­end.

In fact, Au­gus­tine said he is pre­pared to use his pow­ers to give a strong re­jec­tion if James makes any re­quest for re­im­burse­ment for the char­tered air­craft.

The lat­est con­tro­ver­sy comes af­ter James, the Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries, and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, chart­ed a jet to leave Mar­tinique as the im­pend­ing threat of Hur­ri­cane Tam­my caused the can­cel­la­tion of some flights out of that is­land.

James had been there at­tend­ing the Con­nec­tiv­i­ty of the Greater Caribbean con­fer­ence from Oc­to­ber 18-20.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that James char­tered a flight for him, an­oth­er THA of­fi­cial, and two As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States em­ploy­ees to leave the is­land on Sun­day.

The flight via the US-reg­is­tered air­craft re­port­ed­ly cost be­tween US$5,000 and $9,000, and dropped James and his THA col­league off in To­ba­go and the two ACS of­fi­cials in Trinidad.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue on Mon­day, James said he made the pri­vate arrange­ment to re­turn home be­cause he had fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions to at­tend to on Mon­day and Tues­day. He said he was al­so foot­ing the bill but re­fused to in­di­cate whether the oth­er peo­ple on the flight con­tributed to the cost.

Speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a cer­e­mo­ny where the US Am­bas­sador do­nat­ed a field hos­pi­tal and an am­bu­lance to the THA at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex, Au­gus­tine said he on­ly be­came aware of the de­ci­sion on Mon­day night via an ex­clu­sive CNC3 News re­port.

He em­pha­sised, how­ev­er, that the de­ci­sion was made with­out his ap­proval or any con­sul­ta­tion with the THA ex­ec­u­tive.

“The THA has not en­gaged any pri­vate char­ter, the THA has not paid any pri­vate char­ter, the THA will not be pay­ing any pri­vate char­ter, the THA will not be en­gag­ing any such pri­vate char­ter,” he said.

Au­gus­tine con­firmed that James will not be re­im­bursed should he try to re­coup any mon­ey re­lat­ed to the trip, and any mis­con­duct or con­flict of in­ter­est in the arrange­ment to char­ter this flight will be iden­ti­fied and probed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Au­gus­tine said up un­til 6 pm on Sun­day, he was of the im­pres­sion that James was still strand­ed in Mar­tinique due to the on­go­ing hur­ri­cane watch.

“Ini­tial­ly, I thought they were strand­ed, so my first ques­tion was ‘How can the THA re­trieve you all?’ and then he in­di­cat­ed that they re­trieved them­selves. They re­trieved with the mat­ter them­selves and to which my next ques­tion was ‘Is this a com­pa­ny the THA was do­ing busi­ness with?’ The an­swer was no… I am hap­py as Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance that this is not a bill the THA has to take care of.”

He al­so ad­mit­ted that James did not have fund­ing for the trip as it was a late re­quest.

“Not on­ly was there no re­lease, but there was al­so no spend from the di­vi­sion up to this date for this trip be­cause it came as a last-minute in­vi­ta­tion, and they had to foot their bill there with hopes of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil agree­ing to a re­fund.”

Al­though Au­gus­tine said he had not yet de­ter­mined if any pro­to­cols were vi­o­lat­ed, he ac­knowl­edged that he sees no is­sue with James—who re­ceives a month­ly salary of over $20,000—util­is­ing his funds for the char­tered flight back home.

Au­gus­tine al­so re­vealed that the THA has nev­er had a con­trac­tu­al or ser­vice agree­ment in the past or present with the air­line com­pa­ny used to trans­port James.

He clar­i­fied, though, that he would on­ly ad­dress con­cerns re­gard­ing this mat­ter if it is found to be in vi­o­la­tion of the law.

When asked about po­ten­tial is­sues with the char­ter­ing process, Au­gus­tine made it clear any in­ves­ti­ga­tions would sole­ly in­volve the char­ter­er and not James. He said he had no prob­lem with the last-minute de­ci­sion to at­tend the con­fer­ence, as sec­re­taries can take trips at their cost and lat­er bring them to the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil for con­sid­er­a­tion.

The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­so launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter, as the air­craft is an Amer­i­can char­ter and had no au­tho­ri­sa­tion to con­duct com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions in­to T&T.

Mean­while, PNM To­ba­go coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis is call­ing on the THA to ad­dress al­le­ga­tions re­gard­ing pri­vate­ly spon­sored over­seas trips for one of its ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers. Den­nis said there are more ques­tions than an­swers.

“What lev­el of ex­pen­di­ture has this ad­min­is­tra­tion in­curred so far on over­seas trav­el, be­cause in two short years we have seen a fla­grant abuse of over­seas trav­el. A num­ber of un­nec­es­sary trips with ze­ro ben­e­fits to the tax­pay­ers and peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

He again ques­tioned the spend­ing ac­tiv­i­ty for trav­el among mem­bers of the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.

“Did any pri­vate con­trac­tor, in­di­vid­ual, or com­pa­ny pro­vide re­sources in the form of air­line tick­ets or any oth­er form of hos­pi­tal­i­ty to any mem­ber of the THA or staff of the THA dur­ing the last two years?”

At­tempts to reach James yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.