Gail Alexan­der

The Tourism Min­istry worked with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) af­ter pas­sage of the Bud­get last Oc­to­ber to en­sure re­sources were avail­able for the suc­cess­ful re­turn of Car­ni­val 2023. How­ev­er, this was de­pen­dent on time­ly ap­pli­ca­tion of fund­ing by the NCC, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“It is hoped that fu­ture re­quests for fund­ing will be made in a far more ef­fi­cient man­ner,” he told Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Row­ley re­spond­ed af­ter Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecha­ran asked why the NCC had not re­ceived its $147 mil­lion fund­ing from Gov­ern­ment as re­port­ed by its chair­man.

He said on Feb­ru­ary 16 the Tourism Min­is­ter is­sued a press re­lease fol­low­ing mis­lead­ing re­ports about fund­ing for Car­ni­val. He said the Min­istry clar­i­fied that as of Feb­ru­ary 9, the NCC had re­ceived fund­ing of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $17 mil­lion. Late on Feb­ru­ary 10, one week be­fore Car­ni­val, the NCC made a re­quest for a fur­ther $83 mil­lion which in­clud­ed trans­fers to Car­ni­val bod­ies of $15.3 mil­lion and grants to re­gion­al bod­ies of $6.3 mil­lion.

The re­quest was sub­mit­ted to the Fi­nance Min­istry that same af­ter­noon and of­fi­cers worked through­out the week­end to en­sure that “this very late re­quest for fund­ing by the NCC” was processed.

Row­ley said there were er­rors in the sub­mis­sion from the NCC and fol­low­ing re­ceipt of ad­di­tion­al sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion and amend­ments on Feb­ru­ary 13, the Fi­nance Min­istry ap­proved the re­lease of $83 mil­lion on Feb­ru­ary 16, with­in three days of re­ceiv­ing the re­quired doc­u­men­ta­tion.

Crime sym­po­sium April 17-18

Cou­va North MP Ravi Rati­ram asked for spe­cif­ic date on which the na­tion­al de­bate and con­sul­ta­tion on crime would be held.

Row­ley replied: “We’re fi­nal­is­ing those dates now. I’m in dis­cus­sions with my Cari­com col­leagues. We ‘re work­ing with re­spect to April 17 and 18.”

In re­sponse to Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal’s ques­tion about whether the crime con­sul­ta­tion had been fused with the re­cent­ly an­nounced Cari­com crime sym­po­sium, Row­ley said: “Yes, to a cer­tain ex­tent. It is be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go was pre­pared to go it alone in hav­ing a na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion but at the Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing it was found it’s bet­ter. We did have plans to host a sim­i­lar meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos in 2019 but with the com­ing of COVID that didn’t ma­te­ri­alise.”

Rati­ram asked about putting cit­i­zens’ needs be­fore the re­gion but Row­ley said it was pre­cise­ly be­cause Gov­ern­ment is putting cit­i­zens’ needs first that the event is be­ing held with Cari­com col­leagues who are fac­ing the same is­sues.

He said they are ex­cit­ed to work along­side T&T and find re­gion­al re­spons­es on is­sues such as the in­flow of small arms and as­sault weapons in­to re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries

“We could speak more loud­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly as Cari­com to the US as against speak­ing as in­di­vid­ual coun­tries,” he said.

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Dr Row­ley said a draft Cab­i­net note is be­ing pre­pared on leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late PH taxi dri­vers. He said the mat­ter is be­ing pur­sued through the Works Min­istry and will “even­tu­al­ly end in some sort of leg­isla­tive re­sponse.”

He added that de­vel­op­ing leg­is­la­tion in­volves con­sul­ta­tion, craft­ing of doc­u­ments and en­sur­ing the law is fit for pur­pose which “usu­al­ly takes time.”