JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jense.lavende@guardian.co.tt

While po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Shane Mo­hammed has giv­en the PNM a four out of ten rat­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says his Gov­ern­ment has done “very well.”

Yes­ter­day, the PNM-Gov­ern­ment cel­e­brat­ed its eighth year in of­fice. Asked about its per­for­mance dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said giv­en the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic time that ex­ist­ed when it was elect­ed in­to of­fice, it has done very well.

“I think a lot of good things have hap­pened in that eight-year pe­ri­od. Some of the things you may re­call in the first year in of­fice, the biggest is­sue on which the Gov­ern­ment was pil­lo­ried was the To­ba­go fer­ry,” he said.

Row­ley said that the prob­lem was fixed, adding that there is “nev­er a day where we don’t have prob­lems.”

He al­so said: “I think the Gov­ern­ment has done quite well in a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, rea­son­ably well.

“We have not been suc­cess­ful in every­thing that we’ve done but when you look at the suc­cess­es that we had in clos­ing off the Cli­co mat­ter, in re­cov­er­ing sub­stan­tial sums of mon­ey, as­sets to the state and the Cli­co bailout.”

Row­ley said the han­dling of the Cli­co bailout was a suc­cess that must be ac­knowl­edged, along with High Court judg­ment dic­tat­ing that NID­CO be re­im­bursed some $921 mil­lion from OAS, the con­trac­tor hired un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship to con­struct the high­way to Point Fortin.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was able to ne­go­ti­ate bil­lions in lit­i­ga­tion from com­pa­nies for the clo­sure of the Smelter Plant in La Brea.

On the flip side, Row­ley said, some of the fail­ures in­clud­ed los­ing touch with the peo­ple of To­ba­go, which re­sult­ed in a 14-1 beat­ing in the 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

“I think that was one of our fail­ures. We were able to save some things, but I don’t know that there are many fail­ures.

“We’ve tak­en some brave steps that so far have worked out. I think we need to just be a lit­tle pa­tient with some things. Our gas pro­duc­tion is not where it used to be and the mar­ket for gas is un­der ques­tion,” Row­ley said.

‘Pub­lic ser­vants de­serve an in­crease’

On the is­sue of min­i­mum wage, the Prime Min­is­ter left that to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who he said may ad­dress it in the up­com­ing bud­get. He, how­ev­er, said he was dis­ap­point­ed with the in­abil­i­ty of his Gov­ern­ment to set­tle wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents pub­lic ser­vants.

“I’m sor­ry that you were not able to get an agree­ment with the pub­lic ser­vice. So that what­ev­er the Gov­ern­ment can af­ford, that mon­ey could be made avail­able im­me­di­ate­ly to the pub­lic ser­vants,” Row­ley said.

He added, “The fight to get more and not be able to put that mon­ey in pub­lic ser­vants’ hands ear­li­er, but I hope that will not be with us for too long. That is with the tri­bunal now and when­ev­er the tri­bunal rules, the Gov­ern­ment will move with alacrity to get it to the pub­lic ser­vants’ hands.”

Row­ley said the work­ers de­served an in­crease, but the Gov­ern­ment could on­ly pay what it could af­ford. He said he did not want a “feel good” sit­u­a­tion to­day that would lead to prob­lems lat­er.

Row­ley, who will be in Bar­ba­dos from Au­gust 17 to 22, said while on va­ca­tion with his fam­i­ly there, he would take some time to dis­cuss the per­for­mance of the West In­dies crick­et team and what can be done to fix it.

Row­ley has been crit­i­cal of the re­gion­al side and was named as the new chair­man of the Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub­com­mit­tee re­gard­ing the Caribbean crick­et.