Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce be­lieves the changes in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil might help the econ­o­my get bet­ter, which would be good for busi­ness­es in To­ba­go. How­ev­er, the is­land’s oth­er busi­ness cham­ber said the reshuf­fle was a waste.

On Mon­day sev­en THA mem­bers were re­as­signed with one sec­re­tary de­mot­ed and re­placed by an as­sis­tant sec­re­tary. Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine al­so an­nounced that he will step down as Fi­nance Sec­re­tary.

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Sport Sec­re­tary Ter­ance Baynes was moved to the In­fra­struc­ture Di­vi­sion as an as­sis­tant sec­re­tary and ap­point­ed deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer. He will re­ceive his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment to­day.

Joel Samp­son was pro­mot­ed to sec­re­tary to re­place Baynes.

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) Cur­tis Williams said he hopes Baynes en­cour­ages ma­jor con­struc­tion projects to stim­u­late the busi­ness sec­tor.

“Most of the peo­ple on the ground are wait­ing for de­liv­er­ables that were men­tioned. That is the fo­cus now. As they are com­ing to the end of their term most peo­ple are go­ing to judge the per­for­mance of this as­sem­bly based on their de­liv­er­ables,” he said.

“We don’t know what’s in the mind of the Chief Sec­re­tary. We can on­ly look at what’s on the out­side. We want to as­sess each di­vi­sion to en­sure they have de­liv­ered on promis­es and that’s what the To­ba­go pub­lic and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty will look at.”

Williams said the per­for­mance of di­vi­sions will be eval­u­at­ed based on what was promised and what was ac­tu­al­ly de­liv­ered rather than Au­gus­tine’s in­ten­tions.

“It’s an el­e­va­tion for Samp­son, I won’t call it a pro­mo­tion. He was an as­sis­tant sec­re­tary and now he’s lead­ing Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment. Prob­a­bly based on his track record the Chief Sec­re­tary in his glo­ry de­cid­ed to move him in­to that po­si­tion to make a bet­ter im­pact in that di­vi­sion.

“We are tak­ing a cou­ple of months be­fore we as­sess him. I know next year every­one will be go­ing in­to elec­tion mode so his pe­ri­od of time for us to get feed­back from him will take a while but we look for­ward to see­ing what he will do.”

Williams not­ed the im­por­tance of this re­or­ga­ni­za­tion for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly with gen­er­al elec­tions and THA elec­tions ap­proach­ing.

“The reshuf­fle must pro­duce de­vel­op­ment be­cause we need de­vel­op­ment on the is­land. We need a game chang­er. We want to make sure that when de­vel­op­ment comes the man on the ground, the fish­er­man, ven­dors, see the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. We want mean­ing­ful and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment to ben­e­fit the To­ba­go space. That is what we want from this strate­gic reshuf­fle,” he said.

“Right now, we in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are go­ing through a bit of chal­lenges. There are rough spots here and there and we need to get these rough stops smoothed out com­ing to the end of the life of this As­sem­bly.”

Williams said the cham­ber will rate the THA’s per­for­mance when the changes to the ex­ec­u­tive are set­tled.

Mar­tin George, chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, said the reshuf­fle was “much ado about noth­ing.”

He said the reshuf­fle, which had been ru­moured for near­ly two years, turned out to be large­ly sub­stance-less.

“It is some­thing of lit­tle or no mo­ment what­so­ev­er and should not oc­cu­py too much time in terms of the To­ba­go space and this To­ba­go place. What we need to fo­cus on are the things that will boost the econ­o­my of To­ba­go, things that would re­duce crime.”

George said the reshuf­fle should have been more mean­ing­ful with changes made to key po­si­tions.