Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

The To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM is sup­port­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA’s) de­ci­sion to con­sol­i­date three spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­nies.

Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis an­nounced last week that the Fish Pro­cess­ing Com­pa­ny (FIP­COT), the To­ba­go Cas­sa­va Prod­ucts Lim­it­ed (TC­PL) and the To­ba­go Cold Stor­age and Ware­house Fa­cil­i­ty (TCOSWAF) will be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to one, with a new man­date and a fresh vi­sion, to en­sure that the de­sired ob­jec­tives are achieved.

The three com­pa­nies will be sub­sumed in­to one com­pa­ny called the To­ba­go Agri-Busi­ness Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and would be man­aged by a board of di­rec­tors. The com­pa­ny would be formed by Oc­to­ber 2020, and would fall un­der Sec­re­tary Hay­den Spencer in the Di­vi­sion of Agri­cul­ture, Food Pro­duc­tion and Fish­eries.

Po­lit­i­cal Leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine said the new ini­tia­tive will be more pro­duc­tive for the is­land.

“We have rea­soned that the merg­ing of these three com­pa­nies, will give us a more stream­lined, a more holis­tic ap­proach and will help to achieve the one vi­sion which is to en­sure that we can have more mass pro­duc­tion in To­ba­go and that our farm­ers and our fish­er­men can be tak­en care of in a par­tic­u­lar way,” she said

Mean­while, Mi­nor­i­ty As­sem­bly­man Far­ley Au­gus­tine called on the THA to au­dit the three com­pa­nies be­fore they are con­sol­i­dat­ed.

How­ev­er, re­spond­ing to the state­ment, PRO Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes said, the au­dit­ing and pro­cure­ment are a gen­er­al prac­tice by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Any doubt that may have ex­ist­ed be­fore of politi­cians be­ing in­volved in the pro­cure­ment process is com­plete­ly gone now be­cause there are Pro­cure­ment Units, there are Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cers, there’s a process and again, so there’s a process for pro­cure­ment, there’re process­es for au­dit­ing, so there is not a sin­gle per­son here in the PNM Ad­min­is­tra­tion, who is afraid of any of type of au­dit, be­cause it does not show up a de­fi­cien­cy in any way of the politi­cian, so to speak and I think we all wel­come au­dits, cause au­dits hap­pen as part of the process and it’s not to be used as a big stick, or per­ceived as a big stick over any­one in the ad­min­is­tra­tion” Des Vi­gnes said.