Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Sen­a­tor Allyson West, is re­fut­ing claims made in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle about her over the week­end, that she was a mem­ber of a state board.

Min­is­ter West re­spond­ed to the ar­ti­cle to­day, seek­ing to what she says is er­ro­neous in­for­ma­tion in the Sun­day Ex­press ar­ti­cle pub­lished on Sun­day 19 April 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter, a sim­ple ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise could have avoid­ed the er­ror, which leaves the wrong im­pres­sion in the minds of the pub­lic.

The full text of the state­ment from the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter, fol­lows…

ER­RO­NEOUS IN­FOR­MA­TION IN SUN­DAY EX­PRESS AR­TI­CLE

On Sun­day April 19, 2020, an ar­ti­cle ti­tled ‘Mooni­lal: PM should have brought in Op­po­si­tion’ was writ­ten by Ria Taitt and pub­lished in the Sun­day Ex­press which stat­ed that, “Ger­ry Brooks and Allyson West re­signed (from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the Port Au­thor­i­ty re­spec­tive­ly) key po­si­tions in the Gov­ern­ment in the af­ter­math of con­tro­ver­sial de­vel­op­ments”.

I would like to cor­rect the er­ror in this state­ment by clear­ly stat­ing that I have nev­er been a mem­ber of any State Board, The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go or oth­er­wise. Prop­er re­search or ver­i­fi­ca­tion of in­for­ma­tion would have in­di­cat­ed such.

It is al­ways un­for­tu­nate when mem­bers of the me­dia re­port in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly where a sim­ple ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise would have un­cov­ered the in­ac­cu­ra­cy. Fact-check­ing be­fore pub­lish­ing is cru­cial as mem­bers of the pub­lic, more of­ten than not, make the as­sump­tion that what is writ­ten is the truth. There is a du­ty to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion that is ac­cu­rate.

Once again it is left up to the in­di­vid­u­als men­tioned to cor­rect the mis­in­for­ma­tion in the hope of re­duc­ing the fall­out.