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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Govt refuses to answer questions on Central Bank, WASA firings

by

13 days ago
20250627
Minister of Finance Davendranath Tancoo starts the debate on the prime minister's pension bill during the fifth sitting of the House of Representatives of the thirteenth parliament in the Red House today.  Photo by Roger Jacob.

Minister of Finance Davendranath Tancoo starts the debate on the prime minister's pension bill during the fifth sitting of the House of Representatives of the thirteenth parliament in the Red House today. Photo by Roger Jacob.

The gov­ern­ment on Fri­day de­clined to re­spond to two ur­gent Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the dis­missal of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire and the ter­mi­na­tion of se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), in­vok­ing pub­lic in­ter­est pro­vi­sions in the Stand­ing Or­ders.

The ques­tions fell un­der the sec­tion No­tice of Ur­gent Ques­tions, which the Speak­er had ap­proved un­der Stand­ing Or­der 27.

The first ques­tion came from Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert, who asked Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, "Can the Min­is­ter pro­vide the rea­sons for the ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­point­ment of Dr.

Alvin Hi­laire as Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go? "

Tan­coo rose and said, “Thank you, Mis­ter Speak­er. Mis­ter Speak­er, I re­fer your at­ten­tion to Stand­ing Or­der 27(1)(g) as it re­lates to this ques­tion.”

Speak­er of the House Jagdeo Singh then clar­i­fied the pro­vi­sion, which al­lows a min­is­ter to de­cline to an­swer if, in their opin­ion, pub­lish­ing the re­sponse would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

A sec­ond ques­tion came from Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who asked Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, In light of the con­fir­ma­tion by the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers of Wa­ter and Sew­er­age

Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) of the im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of nine ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of WASA, can the Min­is­ter in­di­cate the rea­sons for the ter­mi­na­tion?" 

Padarath al­so de­clined to an­swer, in­vok­ing the same stand­ing or­der.

Op­po­si­tion did not chal­lenge ei­ther re­fusal. No points of or­der were raised, there were no sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions, and no desk-thump­ing fol­lowed the re­spons­es.

Dr Hi­laire was oust­ed af­ter re­port­ed­ly re­fus­ing gov­ern­ment pres­sure to re­veal top users of for­eign ex­change. Hal­l­i­day and nine ex­ec­u­tives were dis­missed as part of a shake-up to re­verse the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s WASA trans­for­ma­tion plan, with Act­ing CEO Jee­van Joseph ap­point­ed. 

There was no post-cab­i­net brief­ing on Thurs­day leav­ing the pub­lic with lit­tle of­fi­cial ex­pla­na­tion.


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