RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ruled out any im­mi­nent Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, in­sist­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing re­sults af­ter what she de­scribed as a strong first year in of­fice.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the $220 mil­lion Hilton Gar­den Inn in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment’s progress but stressed that sig­nif­i­cant work still lies ahead.

Asked to as­sess her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s per­for­mance, she said, “We’ve done a lot. There’s still so much to do … we have many promis­es to keep, we have a lot more work ahead.”

“I feel that we’ve done a lot of work, but I know there’s much more to be done, and I’m not shirk­ing from that. I’m look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work for the peo­ple of our coun­try,” she added.

Amid spec­u­la­tion about changes with­in her Cab­i­net, the Prime Min­is­ter dis­missed the pos­si­bil­i­ty out­right.

“No, there’s no reshuf­fle on the cards at this time,” she said.

As her ad­min­is­tra­tion marks one year in of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the pe­ri­od as one de­fined by mea­sur­able gains, par­tic­u­lar­ly in crime re­duc­tion. She cit­ed sta­tis­tics in­di­cat­ing a de­cline in ma­jor of­fences.

“Look, the mur­der rate is down by 42 per cent. Crime was some­thing we cam­paigned heav­i­ly on, and we have some achieve­ments—but, as I say, much more to do,” she said.

“Mur­ders are down by 42 per cent, se­ri­ous crimes down by 30 per cent,” she added.

De­spite these gains, she main­tained a cau­tious tone.

“While I am very hap­py about that re­duc­tion, I think there’s still much more to be done.”

She al­so re­ject­ed crit­i­cism that her ad­min­is­tra­tion has not com­mu­ni­cat­ed suf­fi­cient­ly with the pub­lic, ar­gu­ing that no lev­el of out­reach would sat­is­fy every­one.

“You could nev­er com­mu­ni­cate enough. There are some peo­ple who will nev­er be hap­py no mat­ter what we do … You can’t please every­body all the time,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter fur­ther em­pha­sised that her Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed long­stand­ing chal­lenges that can­not be re­solved overnight.

“There is more to be done. The ne­glect of 120 months can­not all be cor­rect­ed in 12 months,” she added.

While she de­clined to out­line spe­cif­ic flag­ship projects dur­ing the in­ter­view, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a more de­tailed ac­count­ing of achieve­ments would be pro­vid­ed soon.

“I’ll speak more on that on Sat­ur­day, when we have more time to list them,” she said.

She sig­nalled con­ti­nu­ity in lead­er­ship and pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, un­der­scor­ing that her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains com­mit­ted to its man­date with­out dis­rup­tion at the Cab­i­net lev­el.