Gail Alexan­der

There has been no de­lib­er­ate at­tempt on the part of the Gov­ern­ment to re­duce To­bag­o­ni­ans’ au­ton­o­my con­cern­ing the ser­vices they have be­come ac­cus­tomed to at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has been in­struct­ed to speak with the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al and get the ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vice on the mat­ter.

“I have to­day at the Cab­i­net in­struct­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take hold of this is­sue again to speak with the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al again to get ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vice again and to en­sure that the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of To­ba­go is not falling prey to the nu­ances of in­di­vid­ual be­hav­iour at the per­son­al lev­el. I say no more on this mat­ter at this time,” he added.

Row­ley, who was speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, not­ed claims by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine at a re­cent press con­fer­ence that the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ap­pears to be de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­min­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans’ au­ton­o­my by re­strict­ing ser­vices tra­di­tion­al­ly of­fered at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice in To­ba­go.

Row­ley said it was un­for­tu­nate that the is­sue of what is hap­pen­ing in the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice should be han­dled in that way.

“There­fore, as Prime Min­is­ter, I want to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that, con­trary to what the Chief Sec­re­tary had at­tempt­ed to make the pop­u­la­tion be­lieve—es­pe­cial­ly the pop­u­la­tion of To­ba­go—there has been no de­lib­er­ate at­tempt on the Gov­ern­ment’s part to do any such thing.”

It’s the sec­ond time an is­sue has arisen be­tween the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the 2023 im­passe be­tween the of­fices of the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al in To­ba­go and Trinidad. That led to de­lays in ser­vices. How­ev­er, the is­sue was lat­er ad­dressed by the AG and PM.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley said that up­on fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion—and the in­volve­ment of in­for­ma­tion and con­cerns from the To­ba­go MPs—he said the is­sue of the op­er­a­tions of the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice in To­ba­go has once again be­come an is­sue “that once again re­quires the at­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.”

Row­ley said, “It’s not a pol­i­cy po­si­tion on the part of the Gov­ern­ment; it’s clear­ly per­son­al­i­ties and in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the law, and the Gov­ern­ment has to in­ter­vene to en­sure that any im­po­si­tion of per­son­al pref­er­ences or spu­ri­ous in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the law are dealt with in an ap­pro­pri­ate way,” he added.

Row­ley said he was a lit­tle bit un­der the weath­er yes­ter­day.