Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Cab­i­net re­treat which con­clud­ed yes­ter­day was “very pro­duc­tive”, with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley lead­ing his team in a se­ries of con­ver­sa­tions that touched every sin­gle min­istry, ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment sources.

Some are now wait­ing to see if any changes—in­clud­ing min­is­te­r­i­al—arise from the se­ries of con­ver­sa­tions which the PM held dur­ing the event.

Cab­i­net mem­bers left the CrewsInn venue with no word on the re­treat. Nor did the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice (OPM) state what was dis­cussed and any po­si­tion/de­ci­sion tak­en.

The OPM on­ly stat­ed that Row­ley had a work­ing lunch at the venue with Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard and ex-West In­dies spin­ner Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine. It was not­ed that Row­ley was con­tin­u­ing to en­gage a num­ber of crick­et stake­hold­ers in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of Cari­com’s Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Crick­et Sub-com­mit­tee.

Apart from no im­me­di­ate of­fi­cial state­ment—as has oc­curred with pre­vi­ous Cab­i­net re­treats—min­is­ters al­so didn’t re­ply when con­tact­ed, post-re­treat.

How­ev­er, sources said dis­cus­sions were gen­er­al­ly fo­cused on chart­ing the way for­ward. This is the fourth year of the PNM’s sec­ond term, which be­gan in 2020.

They added, “(The re­treat) was very pro­duc­tive. The Prime Min­is­ter led the team in a se­ries of con­ver­sa­tions that touched every sin­gle Min­istry.”

While Tues­day’s ses­sion in­volved a pre­sen­ta­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, oth­er sources claimed that yes­ter­day, min­is­ters re­port­ed on their port­fo­lios’ de­liv­ery so far on the 2023 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme and were “held to ac­count” on per­for­mance.

They said a pos­si­ble reshuf­fle wasn’t aired but agreed that the “con­ver­sa­tions that touched every sin­gle min­istry” sig­nalled an as­sess­ment of per­for­mances by line-min­is­ters.

The last reshuf­fle was in March 2022, fol­low­ing the Cab­i­net’s Feb­ru­ary 2022 re­treat.

They couldn’t com­ment on if the se­ries of “con­ver­sa­tions” that oc­curred yes­ter­day might bring changes in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Works or oth­er em­bat­tled min­istries but added, “peo­ple were wait­ing to see what tran­spires”.

Mean­while UNC’s Roodal Mooni­lal will be fil­ing queries for Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley to tell Par­lia­ment the cost of the re­treat at the CrewsInn in Ch­aguara­mas.

“Why use tax­pay­ers’ funds to pay for a re­treat venue when Gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties are avail­able at no cost?” Mooni­lal asked yes­ter­day.

“In the in­ter­est of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, I’d be in­ter­est­ed in know­ing how much of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey was spent on this ‘lime’.

“It’s sus­pi­cious that the Cab­i­net left the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre’s con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties to go CrewsInn. Then we see pic­tures of the PM meet­ing crick­eters. What next? T&T’s new­ly crowned Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al Pageant rep­re­sen­ta­tive?”

Not­ing that on the first day of the re­treat there were six mur­ders and cit­i­zens were swel­ter­ing in the heat with­out wa­ter, Mooni­lal added, “The out­come of this will be the same as the crime talks at the Hy­att which cost $3.5m. And what we ob­tained from that so far? A mur­der rate of 400-plus, climb­ing dai­ly.”