Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

The new­ly ap­point­ed Deputy Chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) says she ex­pects a chal­lenge in the com­ing months as she jug­gles two ma­jor port­fo­lios with­in the THA.

Dr Faith B Yis­rael was sworn in Mon­day af­ter­noon at Pres­i­dent’s House in St Ann’s by act­ing Pres­i­dent, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo.

She will re­tain her port­fo­lio as Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion.

Yis­rael re­places Wat­son Duke as the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary af­ter he re­signed last Thurs­day.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the brief swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny, Yis­rael said she knows the road ahead may be dif­fi­cult.

“It will be dif­fi­cult, it will be hard work, by no means do I think this is go­ing to be easy but I think the Chief Sec­re­tary in his wis­dom and the en­tire team hav­ing elect­ed me in this po­si­tion are ful­ly aware of my tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ties, are ful­ly aware of my oth­er ca­pa­bil­i­ties and there­fore, they have con­fi­dence that I will be able to ful­fil all the man­dates and I think I will,” Yis­rael said.

She be­lieves To­ba­go is on the cusp of de­vel­op­ment and she has faith she can do the nec­es­sary to as­sist in that de­vel­op­ment.

“We’re in a space now where we are mov­ing to­wards the kind of au­ton­o­my and the kind of de­vel­op­ment that we have not seen in quite some time and every­one in­volved is quite ex­cit­ed about be­ing a part of this,” she said.

Yis­rael said while her bur­den will be heavy, she does not ex­pect to have to car­ry it alone, as she said all of the ex­ec­u­tive and the As­sem­bly were pulling their weight.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said a full list of Yis­rael’s du­ties as Deputy Chief will be re­leased in the com­ing days.

“We are cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties we had as­signed to the deputy chief sec­re­tary be­cause, un­der the pre­vi­ous purview, we had for the first time an en­tire build-out in­de­pen­dent of any oth­er di­vi­sion for a deputy chief sec­re­tary,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said the To­ba­go “em­bassy” or To­ba­go House in Trinidad is still on the cards as the chief ad­min­is­tra­tor has been charged with iden­ti­fy­ing a build­ing to house it.

Au­gus­tine said it will al­low the “very large” To­bag­on­ian di­as­po­ra in Trinidad to stay con­nect­ed to their home.

“Sec­ond­ly, that of­fice will be re­spon­si­ble for quite a lot of mar­ket­ing, court­ing of in­vest­ments and will as­sist with the in­ter-Gov­ern­men­tal re­la­tions that is nec­es­sary and we more or less have been mod­el­ling it by the Scot­tish house that ex­ists in Lon­don, so it’s not unique with­in the Caribbean,” he said.