Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

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Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment to­day that no of­fi­cial up­grades have been car­ried out at the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les on the cost of re­cent ren­o­va­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the res­i­dence re­mains in a “de­plorable state” and has not been oc­cu­pied.

“No up­grade of the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence. It has not been oc­cu­pied, so no up­grades have been done. I made that very, very clear,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter added that the ques­tion of ex­pen­di­ture “does not arise”, not­ing that no funds have been spent on the res­i­dence un­der her ad­min­is­tra­tion. She clar­i­fied, how­ev­er, that a re­quest for TT$5 mil­lion to up­grade the res­i­dence had been sub­mit­ted by the con­troller, a po­si­tion ap­point­ed by the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her gov­ern­ment, which has fo­cused on im­prov­ing schools, hos­pi­tals, and po­lice sta­tions, had not pri­ori­tised up­grades to the of­fi­cial res­i­dence. “As a re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment fo­cused on fix­ing schools, hos­pi­tals, po­lice sta­tions, that was not a pri­or­i­ty of my gov­ern­ment at this time,” she said.

She al­so not­ed that the res­i­dence had re­mained large­ly un­used for years and re­quired sig­nif­i­cant re­pairs. The Prime Min­is­ter em­pha­sised that her ad­min­is­tra­tion had con­cen­trat­ed on di­rect­ing pub­lic funds to ser­vices that di­rect­ly im­pact­ed cit­i­zens rather than re­fur­bish­ing gov­ern­ment res­i­dences.

The is­sue has emerged in the wake of the UNC tak­ing of­fice af­ter the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, when Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath raised con­cerns that both White­hall and the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre were not fit for pur­pose. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly post­ed a video on Face­book show­ing the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre’s liv­ing and of­fice spaces, kitchen, bed­rooms, chapel, pool area, and gym in ap­par­ent good con­di­tion.

Fol­low­ing Row­ley’s video, Padarath re­leased a live video from the of­fi­cial res­i­dence, where Wendy Rock, head of house­hold, con­firmed that some re­pairs had been un­der­tak­en and not­ed a re­quest for TT$5 mil­lion to ad­dress gen­er­al up­grades, fur­ni­ture and fit­tings, linens, tow­els, and mod­erni­sa­tion of the 19-year-old fa­cil­i­ty.