BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

The ‘Road to Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee’ has held its first meet­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr kei­th Row­ley who is said to be im­pressed with its work thus far..

Vice-Chair­man of the com­mit­tee and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Robert Le Hunte, told Guardian Me­dia it is clear that the econ­o­my will not be “as healthy” when­ev­er the pan­dem­ic sub­sides.

How­ev­er, he said the Prime Min­is­ter was “im­pressed” by the 22-mem­ber com­mit­tee’s work thus far.

From 3 pm yes­ter­day Min­is­ter Le Hunte said he and sev­er­al oth­ers were locked in an al­most four-hour long meet­ing in which Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is chair­man of the com­mit­tee, was up­dat­ed on their plans.

“I think the feed­back that we got is that he was very im­pres­sive and he liked what he was hear­ing and the ap­proach­es that were be­ing used”, Min­is­ter Le Hunte told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view short­ly af­ter the meet­ing end­ed.

He not­ed that one area of con­cern for the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to be “the whole is­sue of en­hanc­ing the ex­e­cu­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the pub­lic ser­vice.”

Min­is­ter Le Hunte said Dr Row­ley was brought up to speed with some of the plans on how ag­gre­gate de­mand will be im­proved, ways to in­crease sup­ply and em­ploy­ment cre­ation. These he not­ed are some of the fea­tures which will make up the short-term re­port to be hand­ed over on May 8, 2020.

Ad­mit­ting that “it is a lot of work”, the Min­is­ter said the team, in­clud­ing the 16 sub-sec­tors, are work­ing around the clock to sub­mit the re­port at least two days be­fore the dead­line.

“We have put some dead­lines for per­sons to send in their draft re­ports by Sat­ur­day and then we are look­ing to meet again as a group some­time ear­ly next week”, he said.

The com­mit­tee will meet again on Mon­day.

Min­is­ter Le Hunte said Dr Row­ley is go­ing to To­ba­go soon but not­ed he may still be a part of that meet­ing.