AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers from the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture are in­creas­ing­ly re­luc­tant to at­tend Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment co­or­di­nat­ing meet­ings across Trinidad be­cause of what se­nior of­fi­cials de­scribe as a pat­tern of dis­re­spect­ful and de­grad­ing treat­ment by elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives at re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

The is­sue emerged yes­ter­day dur­ing a sit­ting of Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) ex­am­in­ing the per­for­mance of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on road re­pairs and main­te­nance.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Ian Ram­dahin said of­fi­cers have re­peat­ed­ly com­plained about be­ing ver­bal­ly be­rat­ed and un­fair­ly blamed for is­sues that fall out­side the min­istry’s di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

He said tech­ni­cal staff are of­ten blamed for roads that are not un­der the min­istry’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

Ram­dahin warned that in­ter­ac­tions be­tween po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives and tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers were cre­at­ing ten­sion and af­fect­ing co­op­er­a­tion be­tween agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for road main­te­nance.

As a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion, Ram­dahin pro­posed the cre­ation of a ded­i­cat­ed tech­ni­cal fo­rum where en­gi­neers and tech­ni­cal per­son­nel from both the min­istry and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions could meet sep­a­rate­ly to col­lab­o­rate on road main­te­nance is­sues.

He stressed that many of the de­mands be­ing placed on min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the meet­ings ex­ceed the min­istry’s for­mal man­date and bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion.

De­spite that lim­i­ta­tion, Ram­dahin said the min­istry con­tin­ues to pro­vide ex­ten­sive sup­port to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions by sup­ply­ing ma­te­ri­als and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise.

The mat­ter drew ques­tions from com­mit­tee mem­ber Michelle Ben­jamin, who sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the con­cerns were iso­lat­ed to a spe­cif­ic cor­po­ra­tion or rep­re­sent­ed a broad­er is­sue.

Ben­jamin al­so asked whether in­ci­dents had been for­mal­ly doc­u­ment­ed and whether the min­istry had com­mu­ni­cat­ed its con­cerns to the rel­e­vant mu­nic­i­pal bod­ies.

In re­sponse, Ram­dahin said the prob­lem was not con­fined to any one cor­po­ra­tion.

“This is a sys­temic is­sue across the board with all the cor­po­ra­tions,” he told the com­mit­tee.

Ram­dahin said he con­tin­ues to en­cour­age of­fi­cers to at­tend the meet­ings and re­main pro­fes­sion­al. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that the min­istry cur­rent­ly lacks a for­mal mech­a­nism for doc­u­ment­ing and es­ca­lat­ing com­plaints.

The claims were chal­lenged by Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo, who said he had nev­er wit­nessed such be­hav­iour dur­ing co­or­di­nat­ing com­mit­tee meet­ings.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber and for­mer lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive Van­dana Mo­hit al­so of­fered a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, sug­gest­ing that ten­sions may stem from frus­tra­tion over un­re­solved re­quests rather than out­right abuse.

She ar­gued that per­sis­tent ques­tion­ing from coun­cil­lors should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be in­ter­pret­ed as mis­treat­ment.