Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has de­fend­ed his ab­sence from the del­e­ga­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the 51st Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in St Lu­cia, in­sist­ing min­is­ters should on­ly trav­el when their port­fo­lios re­quire it.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the Debe Hin­du SDMS Pri­ma­ry School yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal dis­missed crit­i­cism over his ab­sence, say­ing there was no need for him to at­tend the re­gion­al sum­mit and ac­cus­ing crit­ics of be­ing ac­cus­tomed to the trav­el prac­tices of the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He ques­tioned what he de­scribed as a “fix­a­tion” over whether the En­er­gy Min­is­ter should be on every over­seas en­gage­ment. “I think this coun­try got ac­cus­tomed to Stu­art Young and (Dr Kei­th) Row­ley kind of trav­els and be­lieve that the En­er­gy Min­is­ter must trav­el with the Prime Min­is­ter any­where she goes,” he said.

In a point­ed crit­i­cism of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, Mooni­lal claimed for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­quired then-en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young to ac­com­pa­ny him on for­eign trips be­cause of their shared in­ter­est in golf. “Mrs (Kam­la) Per­sad-Bisses­sar doesn’t play golf, so she doesn’t need any­body to hold her bag,” he re­marked.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter stressed that the Cari­com meet­ing cov­ers a wide range of is­sues, in­clud­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, trade and oth­er mat­ters be­yond his min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“This is a Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing that deals with all types of things. It’s deal­ing with re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty too, but the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter is not go­ing. It’s deal­ing with trade, the Trade Min­is­ter is not go­ing,” he said.

Mooni­lal ex­plained that when en­er­gy mat­ters arise dur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings at­tend­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, he typ­i­cal­ly be­comes in­volved af­ter­wards by car­ry­ing out the tech­ni­cal fol­low-up dis­cus­sions.

“In fact, any­time the Prime Min­is­ter goes to a ma­jor con­fer­ence and mat­ters of en­er­gy arise, gen­er­al­ly a week or two af­ter, I trav­el as well to that coun­try to do all the fol­low-up work, to do the nuts-and-bolts type of work. So that’s how it works,” he said. He cit­ed a re­cent ex­am­ple in­volv­ing meet­ings with Unit­ed States of­fi­cials and en­er­gy com­pa­ny Chevron, say­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar held pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions be­fore his min­istry fol­lowed up.

“At the side of that meet­ing, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar met the En­er­gy Sec­re­tary, and then we fol­lowed up the next week with Chevron. We had two big meet­ings with Chevron. So that’s how it’s done,” he said.

Mooni­lal al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that he was avoid­ing in­ter­na­tion­al en­gage­ments, not­ing that he has al­ready un­der­tak­en sev­er­al of­fi­cial over­seas trips this year.

“I’ve been to Wash­ing­ton five times this year. I’ve been to Suri­name, I’ve been to In­dia, I’ve been to Guyana. In fact, I think I’m over-trav­elled,” he said.

He main­tained that all of his for­eign trav­el has been di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to en­er­gy mat­ters.

“I trav­el strict­ly on en­er­gy busi­ness. I don’t trav­el on busi­ness of trade, com­merce, se­cu­ri­ty, so­cial de­vel­op­ment or ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence,” he said.

Mooni­lal ar­gued that ac­cept­ing the crit­i­cism would mean the Prime Min­is­ter would have to trav­el with her en­tire Cab­i­net when­ev­er she at­tends in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings.