AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Prime Min­is­ter un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly de­fend­ed the cost of his over­seas busi­ness trav­els say­ing it has added bil­lions of dol­lars to this coun­try’s purse. 

In fact, Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he is card­ed to leave again in May for trips to Africa and In­dia. 

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, the clear­ly ir­ri­tat­ed Prime Min­is­ter chas­tised both the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and some mem­bers of the me­dia for what he de­scribed as a man­u­fac­tured scan­dal. 

It was re­vealed by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that the State paid $10.6 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on 19 in­ter­na­tion­al trips over three years. 

But the Prime Min­is­ter said each trip had a sig­nif­i­cant pur­pose to this coun­try. 

“If I have to in­vest $10 mil­lion in trav­el to get $17 bil­lion, I will do that every day,” Row­ley as­sert­ed. 

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “I am not a Prime Min­is­ter who trav­els for trav­el­ling sake. I in­di­cat­ed to this coun­try that I am this coun­try’s num­ber one sales­man and I led from the front in rene­go­ti­at­ing and open­ing terms of con­tracts which were ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

He said his trav­el ex­pens­es pale in com­par­i­son to what the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion spent. 

“One del­e­ga­tion, in a pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment in 2011, one del­e­ga­tion to Aus­tralia cost them, $USD 2.6M. I can tell you now with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, through­out my tenure as Prime Min­is­ter no del­e­ga­tion cost $2 mil­lion, none. And there was an­oth­er one to In­dia in 2012, one del­e­ga­tion to In­dia led by the prime min­is­ter, cost $12M, I didn’t see any ban­ner head­line in this coun­try about scan­dal,” Dr Row­ley posit­ed. 

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter said, he goes with a lean del­e­ga­tion, on­ly com­pris­ing peo­ple who have a pur­pose at those over­seas meet­ings. He said the Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment did quite the op­po­site. 

“You will see a cer­tain Shem Baldeosingh, spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the prime min­is­ter, he is hid­ing some­where in Aus­tralia I am told. You will see a cer­tain cap­tain trav­el­ling first class, you will see a cer­tain oth­er mem­ber, Padarath, he was ad­vi­sor to the prime min­is­ter too, you will see an ad­vi­sor on pub­lic en­gage­ment, you will see a Mrs Vid­wa­tee New­ton, not a pub­lic of­fi­cer trav­el­ling first class with the prime min­is­ter, you will see a re­search as­sis­tant to the prime min­is­ter then, a per­son­al as­sis­tant to the prime min­is­ter and a pho­tog­ra­ph­er,” re­fer­ring to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s 2012 trip to In­dia. 

“I did not go to meet my an­ces­tor nowhere and drink and drunk nowhere,” he added. 

From rene­go­ti­at­ing en­er­gy prices to sign­ing oil and gas deals, the Prime Min­is­ter said al­to­geth­er $18 bil­lion was re­cov­ered from his trips. 

“I am here talk­ing about bil­lions of dol­lars that would not have come to us and you come call­ing my name about scan­dal over $10M dol­lars in trav­el to get that done. You ain’t see all of you crazy?” he asked.

Be­fore con­clud­ing his state­ment on his trav­els, Row­ley an­nounced that two more trips were com­ing in May. 

“I have been in­vit­ed by the As­an­te­hene, the King of the Ashan­ti to be his guest of ho­n­our at his 25th an­niver­sary cel­e­brat­ing his as­cen­sion to the throne. I have ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion. I will trav­el to Ghana on May 8, and I will spread the word ac­cord­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go and we would be rep­re­sent­ed,” he said. 

Fol­low­ing this, the Prime Min­is­ter will trav­el to Mum­bai, In­dia to meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Re­liance Group to dis­cuss in­vest­ments in sport.