Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says any ad­di­tion­al claims for le­git­i­mate com­pen­sa­tion by fish­er­folk af­fect­ed dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the $34 mil­lion San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Cen­tre will be looked at re­spon­si­bly.

At the hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny for the fish­ing cen­tre at Kings Wharf yes­ter­day, Young was asked about protests by fish­er­folk in Jan­u­ary for ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion af­ter the project failed to be com­plet­ed with­in the promised dead­line.

He said, “With re­spect to com­pen­sa­tion again, the Gov­ern­ment will look at those things re­spon­si­bly. Com­pen­sa­tion is not some­thing un­like oth­ers, you just go­ing throw out mon­ey at the pop­u­la­tion that is not go­ing to hap­pen. So, I am cer­tain that the per­sons who are in charge of the project, if there are le­git­i­mate claims for com­pen­sa­tion it would be looked at in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner.”

Young boast­ed that the project was de­liv­ered with­in bud­get with “no short­com­ing or short­cuts.”

De­fends Govt’s ef­forts

to re­sume hang­ings

Asked to re­spond to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s promise to con­sid­er re­sum­ing hang­ings in T&T, once elect­ed, he said, “This Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en hang­ings off the book. In fact, we tried to ac­cel­er­ate it but there are a lot of laws in place that made that very dif­fi­cult. Maybe it is she doesn’t un­der­stand the law and hasn’t ap­plied the law, but it’s not be­cause of the lack of try­ing and want­i­ng.”

As for the UNC’s promise for laws for cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter, he said the Gov­ern­ment nev­er in­di­cat­ed that it would not con­sid­er putting that of­fence on the law books. “We don’t rush in­to laws in an un­nec­es­sary man­ner and in a pop­u­lace man­ner.”

Young al­so dis­missed claims by Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the US tar­iffs on T&T may have been linked to in­ter­ac­tions be­tween him, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Rowey and Venezuela, as reck­less and mis­lead­ing.

He said proof that those claims were “com­plete hog­wash,” was his in­vi­ta­tion to a “one-on-one” con­ver­sa­tion with the US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Ja­maica last week.

Leonce stays ‘fo­cused’ amid al­le­ga­tions, con­demns threats against jour­nal­ist

De­spite re­cent al­le­ga­tions, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Adri­an Leonce says he re­mains fo­cused on his work. Leonce has come un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing re­ports of a now-de­funct busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with an in­di­vid­ual al­leged­ly linked to crim­i­nal net­works in the US, Eu­rope, and the Caribbean.

When asked by the me­dia in San Fer­nan­do whether the al­le­ga­tions had af­fect­ed his work life, Leonce re­spond­ed, “No, I am very fo­cused and con­fi­dent in what I have to do, and I re­main that way.”

Re­gard­ing death threats against an in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who ex­posed the al­le­ga­tions, Leonce said, “I find that’s very un­for­tu­nate. I be­lieve we need strong jour­nal­ists in the coun­try to, one, en­sure the pop­u­la­tion has good in­for­ma­tion. And, two, to en­sure there’s some lev­el of ac­count­abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly by per­sons with­in the cit­i­zen­ry. So, any­body’s life be­ing threat­ened I will frown on.”