Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC) is prob­ing al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Sec­re­tary in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Ian Pol­lard over hir­ing prac­tices with­in a unit of the Di­vi­sion of Set­tle­ments, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment.

The scruti­ny fol­lows al­le­ga­tions that Pol­lard did not ad­here to es­tab­lished hir­ing pro­ce­dures for con­tract em­ploy­ment in the THA in the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Unit.

A brief ac­knowl­edge­ment let­ter from the IC on June 7 to THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris, who brought the mat­ter to the com­mis­sion’s at­ten­tion on May 28, stat­ed they re­ceived his let­ter and the doc­u­ments at­tached and not­ed that “the said let­ter and at­tached doc­u­ments are cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the com­mis­sion’s at­ten­tion.”

In doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the call for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was prompt­ed by a leaked memo from the THA di­vi­sion’s ad­min­is­tra­tor, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 12, 2023.

This memo raised alarms about the po­ten­tial for fi­nan­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty due to hir­ing prac­tices.

One of the con­cerns raised in the memo is that there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion to show how the hir­ing process hap­pened. Guardian Me­dia was told up to ten peo­ple were re­cruit­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the memo, “… fund­ing was in­suf­fi­cient to fa­cil­i­tate salaries of the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Unit as at Au­gust 2023. Ex­ter­nal fund­ing will be re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate ar­rears and salaries for 2023/2024 for the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Unit.”

Through­out the memo, the ad­min­is­tra­tor at­tempt­ed to show the ur­gency of se­cur­ing ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­sources to cov­er the di­vi­sion’s bud­get short­fall.

This note, on three oc­ca­sions, sug­gest­ed that the di­vi­sion could face dif­fi­cul­ties in meet­ing its salary com­mit­ments and cov­er­ing ar­rears un­less ex­tra fund­ing was ob­tained.

The memo al­so pro­vid­ed a de­tailed fi­nan­cial analy­sis. It not­ed that the di­vi­sion’s pro­ject­ed ex­pen­di­ture for 2024 was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $36.15 mil­lion, while the al­lo­cat­ed bud­get was on­ly $27.93 mil­lion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that dec­sions were based on Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil Minute #327 from Au­gust 17, 2023, which may not have been up­dat­ed to re­place the 2006 guide­lines.

The memo al­so high­light­ed is­sues with the re­cruit­ment process for a project field of­fi­cer.

Ad­di­tion­al con­cerns were al­so raised about the fi­nan­cial man­age­ment of the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Unit. The memo re­vealed that in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion was used for de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The fi­nan­cial analy­sis showed that the re­quired fund­ing for Rur­al De­vel­op­ment staff was $1.22 mil­lion as of Au­gust 2023, while on­ly $292,619.11 was avail­able in re­leas­es.

For the fis­cal year 2023/2024, the re­quired fund­ing to cov­er ar­rears and an­nu­al salaries to­tals $3.30 mil­lion, fur­ther strain­ing the di­vi­sion’s fi­nances.

The ad­min­is­tra­tor’s memo fur­ther warned that if these fi­nan­cial and pro­ce­dur­al is­sues were not ad­dressed, the di­vi­sion could suf­fer rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age.

It said, “If this sit­u­a­tion is not rec­ti­fied, the di­vi­sion may be brought in­to dis­re­pute.”

Mor­ris told Guardian Me­dia that Pol­lard’s ac­tions may have raised eth­i­cal con­duct is­sues.

All at­tempts to con­tact Pol­lard for com­ment via so­cial me­dia, phone calls, What­sApp, and text mes­sages were un­suc­cess­ful.