Gail Alexan­der

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive will have to dis­cuss the mat­ter of pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, af­ter To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine gave Duke - who’s al­so THA deputy Chief Sec­re­tary - three months to give up his union post.

The meet­ing was con­firmed yes­ter­day by PSA sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Avinash Ma­hara­jh.

Au­gus­tine and Duke were ap­point­ed THA Chief Sec­re­tary and deputy Chief Sec­re­tary last Thurs­day, af­ter their Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots won the THA elec­tion last Mon­day (De­cem­ber 6).

Last Tues­day (De­cem­ber 7), the PSA an­nounced that Duke would con­tin­ue as union head mi­nus re­mu­ner­a­tion. On Thurs­day 9Dec 9), how­ev­er, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi wrote to Au­gus­tine cit­ing law and ex­press­ing con­cerns about Duke’s dual role. Au­gus­tine sub­se­quent­ly gave Duke un­til next March to re­lin­quish his PSA post and if it isn’t done, Au­gus­tine will ask his team to again con­sid­er their de­ci­sion to have Duke as deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

Yes­ter­day, PDP of­fi­cials said the is­sue of Duke hold­ing his union job and a THA post hadn’t been dis­cussed, nor had they ex­am­ined the law on that be­fore the THA polls—al­though there were signs the PDP was more favoured by vot­ers than the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

PSA sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Ma­hara­jh yes­ter­day said the union wouldn’t com­ment on Duke’s sit­u­a­tion un­til its ex­ec­u­tive met and con­sult­ed. Asked if the PSA was aware of laws on hold­ing dual posts, Ma­haraj said the union would have met and dis­cussed mat­ters at a pre­vi­ous meet­ing which Duke chaired. PSA’s state­ment on Duke was lat­er re­leased by gen­er­al sec­re­tary Su­san Grey. Oth­er PSA of­fi­cials said the union would meet as soon as pos­si­ble, like­ly this week.

How­ev­er, com­ment­ing on Au­gus­tine’s state­ment on Duke yes­ter­day, PSA gen­er­al coun­cil mem­ber Pre­ston George (chair­man of PSA’s sec­tion at St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal) said, “What gives Far­ley Au­gus­tine au­thor­i­ty to sus­pend T&T’s law for the next three months? Be­cause that’s what he’s im­ply­ing if he says he’ll give Duke three months to give up the PSA post. So for three months, Duke will wear both PSA and THA deputy Chief Sec­re­tary hats? If Duke has to re­main in PSA for the next three months, he has to step down as THA deputy Chief Sec­re­tary now.”

George said any type of mat­ter can arise over the next three months where there might be a con­flict of in­ter­est where Duke is con­cerned. He said the PSA’s gen­er­al coun­cil didn’t get a chance to dis­cuss Duke’s sit­u­a­tion, as there hadn’t been a coun­cil sit­ting for up to six months and there were is­sues, in­clud­ing re­gard­ing out­stand­ing mat­ters con­cern­ing work­ers.

Mean­while, cruise line agent Charles Car­val­ho Sr, of Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies, is call­ing on the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led THA to ur­gent­ly re­open the cruise ship sea­son halt­ed by the pan­dem­ic since 2020 be­gan “...as all of the ships we’d sched­uled for T&T are now go­ing else­where.”

“We’re call­ing on this new ad­min­is­tra­tion to meet with us soon so we can sal­vage the re­main­ing of the cruise in­dus­try for To­ba­go,” Car­val­ho said.

He said the com­pa­ny wants to meet THA’s new Tourism and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris.

“From our cur­rent list for the 2021-2022 cruise sea­son, there was a to­tal of 109 cruise ship calls des­tined for To­ba­go, bring­ing 149,000 pas­sen­gers—the largest num­ber the is­land would have re­ceived in 20 years.”

He said his com­pa­ny can al­so bring to To­ba­go those ships that Trinidad “doesn’t want.” Urg­ing haste on the is­sue, Car­val­ho said the busi­ness pro­vides in­come to hun­dreds.

“When there’s a cruise ship in Scar­bor­ough, the place comes to life, a joy for the bus and taxi dri­vers, bus dri­vers, guides, shops, restau­rants, ships’ food sup­pli­ers,” he said.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, THA Tourism and Trans­port Sec­re­tary Bur­ris said she on­ly re­ports for du­ty to­day and “all of these things will be looked at.”