Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath has urged the labour union move­ment not to wor­ry about ap­point­ments to state boards.

“Let not your heart be trou­bled,” was Padarath’s re­sponse when asked about re­cent con­cerns raised by Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette re­gard­ing the com­po­si­tion of the state boards ap­point­ed thus far by the Gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a fundrais­ing In­di­an Clas­si­cal Singing event host­ed by the St An­drews Sports and Cul­tur­al Club at the Cou­va South Au­di­to­ri­um yes­ter­day, Padarath, who al­so serves as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, as­sured that all mat­ters raised by An­nisette would be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. He ex­plained that the Gov­ern­ment still has hun­dreds of ap­point­ments to make across var­i­ous state boards.

“I want to say to Mr An­nisette and all of T&T, let not your heart be trou­bled. The Gov­ern­ment has just start­ed to ap­point state boards and we have hun­dreds yet to go. We take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the sen­ti­ments that Mr An­nisette has shared,” Padarath said.

The min­is­ter not­ed that on­ly ten to 15 boards had been ap­point­ed with­in the past two months. He fur­ther re­vealed that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had en­gaged sev­er­al union lead­ers to sub­mit names of in­di­vid­u­als they wish to see ap­point­ed to boards.

Padarath gave the as­sur­ance that ap­point­ments would re­flect a bal­anced rep­re­sen­ta­tion in terms of gen­der, eth­nic­i­ty, and oth­er el­e­ments of T&T’s di­verse so­ci­ety. “We are here to part­ner with you. Labour was a great com­po­nent in the gen­er­al elec­tion win for the UNC,” he stat­ed.

Padarath al­so ad­dressed re­cent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, ref­er­enc­ing a home in­va­sion that took place yes­ter­day at Wind­sor Park. He de­scribed home in­va­sions as “trou­bling and wor­ry­ing,” not­ing their im­pact across the na­tion.

He in­di­cat­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter had com­mit­ted to mak­ing the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion a re­al­i­ty, which would al­low qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als greater ac­cess to firearms. How­ev­er, he not­ed that the cur­rent firearm li­cenc­ing sys­tem is out­dat­ed and re­quires par­lia­men­tary re­form.

Not­ing that the PM spoke about us­ing the Flori­da mod­el for the stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, Padarath said, “We can’t jump in­to it just so. We have to get it right and there­fore, we are ask­ing cit­i­zens to part­ner with us to en­sure that when we put in­to ef­fect stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, we have the right con­cept, the right am­bit of the type of law we would like to in­tro­duce here.”

He added that al­though the UNC Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice with a plan, it can­not be im­ple­ment­ed with­out broad­er con­sul­ta­tion with so­ci­ety.

Padarath al­so promised that the grant­i­ng of firearm user’s li­cences (FULs) will be car­ried out with greater trans­paren­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy, in line with the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion.

“The Gov­ern­ment is work­ing ag­gres­sive­ly,” he said.

He added that ef­forts are al­so un­der­way to re­vi­talise com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing pro­grammes, which he claimed were cut un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said the min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are ex­pect­ed to ad­dress var­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty is­sues in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing the con­tin­u­ing de­bate on the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view to­day.