Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must state to­day specif­i­cal­ly how many jobs and in­vest­ments T&T will be re­ceiv­ing as a re­sult of the Cari­com-Sau­di Ara­bia sum­mit which he at­tend­ed last week, says Op­po­si­tion UNC fi­nance shad­ow min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo.

“The coun­try re­quires specifics: jobs, what will be ex­pand­ed, to what ex­tent, when. No more pie in the sky,” Tan­coo added yes­ter­day.

The Oropouche West MP and UNC chair­man Tan­coo (al­so chair­man of Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee) queried the tan­gi­bles pro­duced for T&T from the Cari­com-Sau­di Ara­bia sum­mit af­ter Row­ley re­turned last Sat­ur­day from the Riyadh sum­mit.

A joint Cari­com-Sau­di Ara­bia state­ment last Fri­day stat­ed the two re­gions agreed on a 15-point de­c­la­ra­tion of in­tent on co­op­er­a­tion on var­i­ous is­sues—food se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy and oth­er mat­ters—in­clud­ing Cari­com’s sup­port of Sau­di Ara­bia’s bid to host the 2030 World Ex­po and 2034 World Cup. The Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly votes on No­vem­ber 28 on the Ex­po host. Sau­di Ara­bia has been lob­by­ing for Cari­com sup­port.

At Row­ley’s Oc­to­ber 26 me­dia brief­ing, he had said that af­ter the Cari­com-Sau­di Ara­bia sum­mit, there would be bi­lat­er­al talks with Sau­di Ara­bia since these were in train al­ready and one area of in­ter­est was in­ter­na­tion­al air trav­el. Last Fri­day’s “Arab News” stat­ed that the Sau­di Min­is­ter of State for For­eign Af­fairs, and Cli­mate En­voy Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir met that day with Row­ley, “on the side­lines of the Sau­di-Cari­com Sum­mit, where they tack­led top­ics of com­mon in­ter­est.” The top­ics were not stat­ed.

There was no re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s What­sApp queries on sum­mit out­comes which were sent yes­ter­day morn­ing to Row­ley and Min­is­ters Stu­art Young, Kaz­im Ho­sein and Dr Amery Browne who al­so at­tend­ed the sum­mit. Oth­er ques­tions per­tained to whether more talks might be need­ed to­wards tan­gi­bles, if re­fin­ery in­vest­ment was broached, the out­come of the Sau­di Ara­bia bi­lat­er­als, in­clud­ing on trans­port and the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the per­cep­tion that the sum­mit was on­ly to woo Cari­com’s sup­port for Sau­di Ara­bia’s World Ex­po bid.

Sub­se­quent­ly yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed Row­ley would hold a me­dia brief­ing at 2 pm to­day.

How­ev­er, the UNC’s Tan­coo said, “It would ap­pear be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter’s Oc­to­ber 26 state­ment—about sev­er­al trips- and now, he doesn’t know if he’s com­ing or go­ing. But he’s still ob­lig­at­ed to in­form cit­i­zens of his Sau­di Ara­bia mis­sion. He was very ver­bose on how crit­i­cal it was for T&T there­fore there are ex­pec­ta­tions. Peo­ple need the specifics be­yond Cari­com’s gen­er­al state­ment.”

“While Cari­com took the time to do its state­ment, T&T’s leader couldn’t find the time to tell cit­i­zens what the trip meant for them, and brief re­porters at the air­port’s VIP lounge the way he used to on re­turn. As with every­thing, the Gov­ern­ment’s re­quired ac­count­ing to the pub­lic on re­turn from trips has be­come less fre­quent im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter. One won­ders if the PM’s ex­pe­ri­ence in an­oth­er coun­try’s VIP sec­tion has made him fear­ful of us­ing VIP lounges,” Tan­coo added.

“The on­ly de­vel­op­ment re­gard­ing a Mid­dle East coun­try we’ve heard of is the Works Min­istry’s state­ment on an air trans­port agree­ment which T&T signed with the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, a coun­try next to Sau­di Ara­bia.

With T&T starv­ing for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and forex, busi­ness lead­ers, as well as cit­i­zens, would have looked for­ward to what the Cari­com-Sau­di Ara­bia sum­mit pro­duced for T&T—but peo­ple have to wait on the PM’s whim and fan­cy,” said Tan­coo.