Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she doesn’t have the pre­rog­a­tive to re­vert to pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment salary struc­tures and over­turn the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) in­creas­es.

A ju­di­cial so­lu­tion is al­so ex­pect­ed in the Paria Pipeline Divers’ tragedy, but there is al­so a per­ceived con­flict of in­ter­est by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) lawyers in that mat­ter.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed the is­sue at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

When asked if the UNC, which had com­plained bit­ter­ly about the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) gov­ern­ment ac­cep­tance of the SRC in­creas­es, would re­vert to the old salary struc­ture, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while the Gov­ern­ment did dis­cuss it, she was ad­vised by her lawyers that, “I do not have that pre­rog­a­tive … in ac­cor­dance with the law, I do not have it.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred fur­ther com­ment to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who said there are a num­ber of cat­e­gories cov­ered by the SRC, in­clud­ing judges and per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, “… so it is dif­fi­cult to do it that way.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said re­vert­ing to the old salary struc­ture for Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and oth­er high-pro­file state of­fi­cials may need the in­ter­ven­tion of the court if any­one is will­ing to mount a chal­lenge.

Ram­per­sad said had the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment brought the mat­ter to Par­lia­ment, it would have been eas­i­er to re­scind it, as op­posed to Cab­i­net now re­ject­ing the pre­vi­ous de­ci­sion.

“It would not be that sim­ple. And as much as Cab­i­net changed, the prob­lem with it is that it didn’t go through the Par­lia­ment. That’s a ma­jor prob­lem. So, it was re­al­ly one-sided in­side of the gov­ern­ment of the day and its cab­i­net. If it was brought to the Par­lia­ment, there would have prob­a­bly been the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ap­peal­ing it as some leg­is­la­tion that was passed in Par­lia­ment, and which is where it should re­al­ly come be­cause giv­en that this is tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey that in­creased, the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­pub­lic should have had the say.”

She said the best way to ad­dress it will be to take it to the court, adding that judges will al­so be af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion.

“Now, these may be ar­gu­ments that who­ev­er is tak­ing it to the court can bring for­ward to re­scind it. It would not be that sim­ple.”

She said Je­re­mie should be the per­son on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­ble for bring­ing this to court.

“This is a messy af­fair. This is not so sim­ple be­cause it is af­fect­ing sev­er­al groups. And I would go on record as say­ing that the judges did de­serve an in­crease. They worked very hard, and they hadn’t had an in­crease since 2014.”

Last No­vem­ber, then-prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ac­cept­ed the 120th SRC re­port for pro­posed salary in­creas­es for the prime min­is­ter, op­po­si­tion leader, MPs, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, and the po­lice com­mis­sion­er, among oth­ers.

The Cab­i­net took the de­ci­sion to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tion with­out it go­ing to Par­lia­ment for de­bate.

Mean­while, on the com­pen­sa­tion for the fam­i­lies of the LM­CS divers who died in the Paria Fu­el pipeline tragedy in 2022, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the is­sue in­volved two stages and Gov­ern­ment al­so want­ed to be care­ful how they pro­ceed with it.

With re­spect to the sur­vivor, she said for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young had promised $1 mil­lion.

“We’re look­ing at it to see how best we can do it, but there’s a bit of a com­pli­ca­tion which I’d need fur­ther ad­vice on from the lawyers for the state, which rep­re­sents tax­pay­ers,” she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the $1m was promised but there was a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est with the lawyers, as they are seen to be “UNC lawyers.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was un­der the im­pres­sion that apart from the $1m pay­out, the le­gal cas­es would con­tin­ue for fur­ther monies.

“So, I don’t want to run out there with­out hav­ing suf­fi­cient knowl­edge, le­gal and oth­er­wise, on how best to pro­ceed. But com­pen­sate, we will. We’ll look at, for ex­am­ple, to solve that is­sue of con­flict of in­ter­est and the $1 mil­lion now and $5 mil­lion lat­er, by hav­ing a kind of ju­di­cial set­tle­ment - hav­ing the par­ties come to­geth­er be­fore a court, a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer rather than hav­ing two lawyers sit­ting down on it ... we have to look at a ju­di­cial set­tle­ment of those mat­ters.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “But we will help these fam­i­lies as much as we can. The fur­ther com­pli­ca­tion is re­gard­ing those who per­ished, who is the fam­i­ly and ad­min­is­tra­tor, it’s not just next of kin ... the ex­ecu­tor - who holds the let­ters of ad­min­is­tra­tion. So, there are those fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions ... which we’ll al­so have to get sort­ed out al­so.”