RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been “burn­ing the mid­night oil” to man­age the State’s af­fairs out of her pri­vate res­i­dence in Phillip­ine, San Fer­nan­do.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Bar­ry Padarath, who was seen yes­ter­day en­ter­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pri­vate home laden with files, said she has been se­vere­ly hand­i­capped by the lack of prop­er fa­cil­i­ties at both the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) at White­hall.

As such, the Prime Min­is­ter has no of­fi­cial of­fice. In­stead, she spent her third day on the job work­ing from home.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is op­er­at­ing at a dis­ad­van­tage,” Padarath de­clared.

He said White­hall has been de­clared un­fit for use, and the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre is al­so un­in­hab­it­able, plagued by raw sewage, rot­ting wood, bro­ken fur­ni­ture, and se­cu­ri­ty scan­ners that do not work.

“There is a sew­er prob­lem there, there is a moat around the fa­cil­i­ty, pho­tos and videos show raw sewage run­ning through the prop­er­ty. There has been poor main­te­nance. There are parts of the fa­cil­i­ty where base­boards have ab­sorbed mois­ture, caus­ing mould. Parts of the wood­en struc­tures have be­gun to rot,” Padarath said. He al­so not­ed that one bed­room was found filled with cas­es of al­co­hol.

“Na­tion­al agen­cies have told us this is not a suit­able place for the Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go to op­er­ate from,” he ex­plained, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that scan­ning equip­ment is not func­tion­al.

“You have to go through se­cu­ri­ty scan­ners be­fore be­ing giv­en ac­cess to the res­i­dence, and none of the scan­ners are work­ing. It’s a dump,” Padarath de­clared.

Padarath re­vealed that the Prime Min­is­ter is al­so un­able to func­tion out of White­hall.

“On Mon­day, par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary Mor­ris and I met with per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Natasha Bar­row, who is head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice. Ten peo­ple are cur­rent­ly crammed in­to that space. The Prime Min­is­ter’s two sec­re­taries share one of­fice. There is no room for my­self or the par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary,” he added.

With no prop­er space at White­hall or at the of­fi­cial res­i­dence, Padarath ques­tioned: “So where ex­act­ly is she sup­posed to go?”

He point­ed out that mould, flood­ing, and ex­ces­sive mois­ture had forced the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at to evac­u­ate White­hall two months ago.

“While there are flow­ers and fan­cy cur­tains, there is a se­ri­ous mould in­fes­ta­tion. Staff have com­plained about their health. This is what the for­mer gov­ern­ment left be­hind — a $32 mil­lion van­i­ty project with no func­tion­al­i­ty,” he added.

How­ev­er, Padarath said that de­spite Per­sad-Bisses­sar work­ing from home, she has not missed a beat. He said she worked from Tues­day un­til 2 yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has been on the job every day. Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and Min­is­ters’ cor­re­spon­dence are be­ing han­dled from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. We have brought work from our min­istry, and in the ab­sence of a con­ducive work­ing en­vi­ron­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter has con­tin­ued work­ing. We are try­ing to make her life eas­i­er and en­sure that the day-to-day mat­ters are tak­en care of with­out hin­drance,” Padarath said.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein, who was al­so seen en­ter­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­dence with a stack of files, said they were mak­ing the most of the sit­u­a­tion.

He said all Cab­i­net mem­bers were try­ing to work to­geth­er as a team.

“I have been briefed by both per­ma­nent sec­re­taries of both min­istries. On Mon­day, I spent the day at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, and there is cer­tain in­for­ma­tion I re­ceived from those brief­in­gs that I need to speak to the Prime Min­is­ter about ur­gent­ly,” he said.

He added that is­sues re­lat­ed to the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty were be­ing han­dled by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

The me­dia was sched­uled to tour White­hall and the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre on Tues­day, but the tour was lat­er can­celled. For­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West said $5 mil­lion had been al­lo­cat­ed un­der her gov­ern­ment for the restora­tion of White­hall, which last re­ceived a $32 mil­lion up­grade in 2019.