KEVON FELMINE

and DA­REECE PO­LO

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is not yet ready to say when he is step­ping down. When asked about his last day in of­fice, Row­ley sim­ply re­spond­ed, “Not yet,” be­fore get­ting in­to his ve­hi­cle and leav­ing.

Row­ley was at­tend­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Nu­trim­ix An­i­mal Feed and Pet Food Plant in Point Lisas yes­ter­day.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young, who is ex­pect­ed to re­place Row­ley fol­low­ing his res­ig­na­tion, al­so at­tend­ed the event. Young was con­firmed as the next prime min­is­ter fol­low­ing a con­tro­ver­sial Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment par­lia­men­tary cau­cus in To­ba­go. How­ev­er, an emer­gency gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing af­firmed that he would take over the reins from Row­ley.

On 3 Jan­u­ary, Row­ley, who turned 75 last Oc­to­ber, an­nounced that he would re­sign as prime min­is­ter be­fore his term ends and “go off to his fam­i­ly.” He al­so stat­ed that he would not seek re-elec­tion as the PNM’s can­di­date for the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy in this year’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

How­ev­er, he has not yet giv­en a de­fin­i­tive date for his re­tire­ment, mark­ing the end of his 45-year ca­reer in pol­i­tics.

While Row­ley re­mains silent on his time­line for leav­ing of­fice, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has sug­gest­ed that he will like­ly com­mem­o­rate the open­ing of the up­grad­ed ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port be­fore step­ping down.

Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing of two scan­ners at the Port of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Im­bert con­firmed that the air­port up­grades are on track for com­ple­tion by March. How­ev­er, he clar­i­fied that the event will mark a “cel­e­bra­tion of prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion” rather than full op­er­a­tion.

Im­bert fur­ther ex­plained that the air­port will not be op­er­a­tional un­til lat­er in the year but ex­pects Row­ley to of­fi­ci­ate the cer­e­mo­ny.

“I ex­pect him to, but that’s a prime min­is­te­r­i­al thing, you bet­ter talk to him about that,” he said.

On De­cem­ber 6, Im­bert ad­mit­ted that the project’s cost had in­creased by $118 mil­lion (TT) but stat­ed that most of the re­quired work had been com­plet­ed. This came af­ter he down­played the fig­ure days ear­li­er, claim­ing the project ex­ceed­ed its orig­i­nal bud­get by US$2.5 mil­lion ($16.975M (TT)). His state­ment fol­lowed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s al­le­ga­tion of cost over­runs amount­ing to $431 mil­lion (TT).

Mean­while, ahead of Par­lia­ment’s dis­so­lu­tion in Au­gust, he said most key leg­is­la­tion has been passed.

“We may need to tweak some bits of leg­is­la­tion. The Min­is­ter of Works has some leg­is­la­tion, I be­lieve, with re­spect to num­ber plates and things like that. So, there are some small items, but all the ma­jor leg­is­la­tion, at least from fi­nance, we fin­ished.”

He added that achiev­ing com­pli­ance with the Glob­al Fo­rum re­mains a pri­or­i­ty and is ex­pect­ed in the com­ing months.

“We signed all the or­ders, signed all the treaties that we need to. So, we’re look­ing for­ward to that. By June, we should be ful­ly com­pli­ant with the Glob­al Fo­rum.”