DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on cur­rent Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath to break his si­lence over hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars spent on an ex­ec­u­tive re­treat host­ed by Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT).

Last week, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that TSTT was in­voiced more than $436,000 on the re­treat held in To­ba­go from Jan­u­ary 16 to 18, based on doc­u­ments ob­tained by its In­ves­tiga­tive Desk.

How­ev­er, the state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny said the fig­ures cit­ed for cer­tain in­voic­es were over­stat­ed by as much as 60 per cent.

De­spite that re­sponse, Gon­za­les said the min­is­ter must still jus­ti­fy the ex­pen­di­ture at a time when TSTT re­port­ed a loss of $82.2 mil­lion in its fi­nan­cial state­ment for the year end­ed March 25, 2025.

He al­so not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed plans to scale back spend­ing amid broad­er fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

“I’m won­der­ing, what did they (TSTT em­ploy­ees) learn on that boat out­side on No Man’s Land with half-naked women and men clad in flow­ers around their necks and what have you.

“They were hav­ing a grand old time on the fi­nan­cial re­sources of TSTT. And, there­fore, the min­is­ter should not be al­lowed to es­cape that. He’s vo­cal on all kinds of mat­ters, very silent on this par­tic­u­lar thing.”

Gon­za­les said he has al­ready filed a ques­tion in Par­lia­ment ask­ing the min­is­ter to jus­ti­fy the ex­pen­di­ture.

The all-in­clu­sive re­treat in­volved act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive Keino Cox and ten mem­bers of TSTT’s ex­ec­u­tive team.

Ex­ec­u­tive re­treats are com­mon­ly used as team-build­ing ex­er­cis­es, al­low­ing se­nior man­age­ment to meet out­side the of­fice en­vi­ron­ment to strength­en com­mu­ni­ca­tion, ad­dress dif­fer­ing per­spec­tives and build co­he­sion with­in lead­er­ship teams.

Video clips from the re­treat, which were al­so ob­tained, show ex­ec­u­tives—some ca­su­al­ly dressed and oth­ers in beach­wear—tak­ing part in games, pos­ing for group pho­tographs and board­ing a tour boat.

The footage al­so shows par­tic­i­pants wear­ing green and white gar­lands, light­ing a bon­fire and in­ter­act­ing un­der two tents on the se­clud­ed beach at No Man’s Land in Bon Ac­cord.

Padarath did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.