Tea cup report completed

THE PRIVILEGES Committee of the House of Representatives has completed its final report on last year’s tea room incident involving  Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Fyzabad MP Chandresh Sharma. Newsday was reliably informed yesterday that the report could be laid and debated in the Lower House shortly after the long Easter weekend.

The Committee is chaired by House Speaker Barry Sinanan and includes Health Minister John Rahael, Public Utilities Minister Pennelope Beckles, La Brea MP Hedwidge Bereaux, Pointe-a-Pierre MP Gillian Lucky and Princes Town MP Subhas Panday. Parliamentary officials said they have not received any formal notice about when sittings of the Lower House would resume but believe this would happen after Easter. Based on Leader of Government Business Ken Valley’s pronouncement last year of increased parliamentary sittings to facilitate Government’s legislative agenda, the next sitting of the Lower House could be either on March 30 or April 1.

For this week however, the parliamentary agenda will be relatively tame with a third meeting between the Joint Select Committee (Government Ministries, Statutory Authorities and Service Commissions-Part II) and the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) at the Red House on Wednesday at 9.30 am, being the only highlight. The NWRHA has been soundly criticised by the JSC during two previous meetings on issues such as its hiring and management practices and procurement processes. The genesis of the NWRHA’s appearances before the JSC was the Authority’s failure to pay an estimated $107 million owed to the Board of Inland Revenue.

At a July 22, 2004 post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall, Rahael said the NWRHA’s problems were linked to a decision taken by the former government to merge the financially troubled (and now defunct) Central RHA with the NWRHA. Government has since formed the North Central RHA which has taken over management of some of the facilities  formerly managed by the NWRHA, such as the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex. The Senate sits on tomorrow at 1.30 pm for Private Members Day.