JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

PM, Chief Secretary break ice with breakfast meeting

by

Carisa Lee
1145 days ago
20220124

Carisa Lee

For the first time since be­ing sworn in as Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine has of­fi­cial­ly met with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The two had break­fast on Sun­day at Dr Row­ley’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence in Blenheim, To­ba­go.

“We had a con­ver­sa­tion that was meant to break the ice,” Far­ley Au­gus­tine said.

On De­cem­ber 6, Au­gus­tine’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) de­feat­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) 14-1 in the THA elec­tions.

Au­gus­tine was at the View­port Su­per­mar­ket yes­ter­day, where he was the fea­tured speak­er at the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2021 Peo­ple’s Choice Award for In­de­pen­dent Su­per­mar­ket.

He said their meet­ing was a wel­comed start to their pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship.

“You could ve­he­ment­ly op­pose some­one’s po­lit­i­cal philoso­phies and still find a way to be cor­dial with that per­son,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said while he and the Prime Min­is­ter shared some laughs they al­so spent over two hours dis­cussing To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and the needs and re­quire­ment of the is­land.

“We did at some point do some as­sess­ment of where as an is­land we have gone wrong in the past, what the suc­cess­es are and the things we can build up­on. We did speak to some of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment projects on the is­land and the kind of sup­port that will be need­ed,” he ex­plained.

He said they had a good start to the reg­u­lar meet­ings re­quired be­tween them by law and he al­ready has a top­ic that may be on the agen­da for their next meet­ing - the high food prices on the is­land.

“It’s an is­sue that has to be ad­dressed and it is a glob­al is­sue,” the Chief Sec­re­tary added.

Au­gus­tine said with the in­crease of freight costs and the in­con­sis­ten­cy of ship­ping, im­port­ed food prices have sky­rock­et­ed. He said some of these fac­tors are out­side the reach of the As­so­ci­a­tion and the pro­pri­etors there may be some­thing Gov­ern­ment can do.

“A lot of the fac­tors re­quire Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to try to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion…how we could just mea­sure it in a way that makes food avail­able es­pe­cial­ly ba­sic food avail­able to all,” he said.

Far­ley said more sec­tors of the econ­o­my need to re­open and it should be be­yond Car­ni­val.

“I don’t see how we could be hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about Car­ni­val events but we can’t have a con­ver­sa­tion about open­ing the beach to 6 pm. To me the log­ic of that just does not make sense...it baf­fles my mind,” he said.

He said dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing and he knows that those in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try have suf­fered but they are not the on­ly ones.

Far­ley said they don’t want to lock out the un­vac­ci­nat­ed from the econ­o­my and re­it­er­at­ed his po­si­tion of vac­ci­na­tion be­ing a choice.

On Fri­day po­lit­i­cal leader of the PDP, Wat­son Duke re­vealed that he took the vac­cine.

“The same kind of ef­fort and work that went in­to mem­bers of the team work­ing with Mr Duke from where he was and in­flu­enc­ing him, and con­vinc­ing him, and ed­u­cat­ing him and get­ting him and his fam­i­ly to a place of tak­ing the vac­cine is that same kind of work that we are go­ing to be do­ing on the ground in To­ba­go,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the THA’s vac­ci­na­tion rate is sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der their goal and on­ly 24,000 peo­ple took the jab on the is­land. He said this can af­fect work on the is­land.

“At this mo­ment we are con­sid­er­ing the mat­ter of cruise ship but here is the re­al­i­ty that To­bag­o­ni­ans have to face these en­ti­ties they are com­ing with peo­ple who are all 100 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed when they want on­ly to be served by vac­ci­nat­ed ser­vice providers,” he ex­plained.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored