Addressing the post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young said, “Today we would like to announce that the Government of TT has heard the plea for help in bringing the body back home.” Young said communication would be made with the Antigua and Barbuda government to assist in transporting Salvary Doyle’s body from St Martin to Antigua and then to TT. He said that efforts to bring home other TT nationals stranded in islands affected by the passage of Irma were ongoing.

Young said a Caribbean Airlines (CAL) ATR plane was able to fly to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and evacuate 35 TT nationals there.

He said that was made possible through collaboration with the British government as only military and humanitarian aid flights were being allowed in. Reminding reporters that a National Helicopter Services Limited helicopter was made available to the Antigua and Barbuda government to assist in relief efforts in Barbuda, Young said the local private sector had approached Government about providing relief to islands affected by Irma’s passage.

While no decision had, yet, been made, Young said there was a possibility of a Coast Guard vessel delivering relief supplies.

He said more TT nationals were due to return home last night.

Later in the briefing, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley indicated that whistleblower legislation would be laid in Parliament when its new session began. The current session is due to end on September 21.

Rowley was hopeful campaign finance legislation would be laid in Parliament soon.

He also disclosed that Cabinet yesterday advised Finance Minister Colm Imbert to review the way in which contracts were evaluated.

Rowley said that would help create a level playing field for small contractors and shift away from dominance by large contractors.

Four members of the Broadbridge family including son environmentalist Stephen Broadbridge, sat in the public gallery alongside relatives of Smith and Nedd in the Port of Spain Eighth Court.

Smith, 34, a joiner and Nedd, 32, a janitor, both of Seales Avenue, Morvant appeared before acting Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle. Smith’s attorney Roland Bain complained that his client was denied medication on one occasion last week while in police custody.

The attorney did not identify Smith’s medical condition. Bain said Smith also had a concern for his personal safety and asked that personal items confiscated by police including clothing, $1,809 and keys to his workshop and vehicle, be returned to the accused man’s mother once they are not deemed part of the police’s inquiry.

Arrangements have been made for the items to be collected while Nedd’s attorney Darryl Worrell asked that his client’s cell phone be returned to Smith’s mother or any other relative. Worrell’s request was denied since, according to prosecutor Insp Winston Dillon, the cellphone forms part of the investigation.

Worrell complained that when Nedd was arrested on September 5, she was not allowed legal counsel although she was told at the time that she was not a suspect.

He said she was placed in a holding cell and not told that she was being held in a homicide inquiry.

The attorneys’ complaints were noted by the acting chief magistrate. The couple will return to court on October 12. Broadbridge, 80, was found stabbed and her throat slit at her Fondes Amandes Road, St Ann’s home on September 2. Smith and Nedd were charged by Ag Insp Glendon Richards. Insp Creighton Hudson, Cpl Ameer Mohammed and PC Nikruma Porter are involved in the investigation spearheaded by Ag ASP Suzette Martin.

However, the Prime Minister must do more than mouth off. He must take decisive steps to tackle the sleaze within the State sector.

Rowley’s statement on Wednesday at a public town hall event was the third time in the space of a few weeks that he has placed a heightened emphasis on this issue. He made clear his view that corruption is the biggest challenge facing his tenure only a few weeks ago while hosting a radio programme, and made similar remarks addressing the media. He again underlined the need for action at yesterday’s Cabinet briefing.

Is the Prime Minister laying the groundwork for a decisive intervention? If he has a plan to tackle this problem, he must now tell us what that plan is. It is one thing to not want to be a populist tactician, it is another to remove oneself from true dialogue and responsiveness to one’s constituents.

Give us a plan.

A good place to start is to shatter the myth that when it comes to white-collar crime, a government’s hands are tied by the workings of the Police Service.

For sure, no government should direct any police force to lay charges. But there are other crucial matters that cry out to be addressed that have little to do with the activities of independent law enforcement agencies.

White-collar crime has a direct nexus with the matters of campaign finance reform and public procurement. Both can, to varying degrees, be addressed by official State policy and by the passage of legislation.

Campaign finance reform is a global issue. For instance, Hillary Clinton promised American voters “a plan for aggressive campaign finance reform” last year.

Her opponent, Donald Trump, put it more nebulously, promising to “drain the swamp.” The world over, politicians are funded by business groups that then expect some benefit in return.

This can be completely innocuous, such as a stable business climate. Or it can be utterly nefarious, such as the handing of a billion-dollar contract to friends.

Too often there are suspicions that Peter pays the piper.

Very often the means of making these payments involve breaches of good procurement practices.

Side by side with this is the unofficial economy, the dark realm in which institutions like the Financial Intelligence Unit can flag hundreds, even thousands of suspicious transactions yet little official law enforcement action results. Money laundering is a serious issue and eventually the trail leads to other things like the drug, gun, and slave trades.

The Government cannot prosecute, but it can resource. It cannot throw money at the country’s problems, but at the same time it must. This is the price we are paying as a society: money that could be funding our hospitals, paying our doctors and nurses, keeping our cities beautiful, and sheltering our homeless must be spent reading the forensic details of balance sheets.

But what about measures like a voluntary system of penalties for registered companies in which any company that breaches the rules is blacklisted? Or repealing the funding provisions of the Representation of the People Act? Or reforming the Constitution to allow more effective disciplinary action against corrupt technocrats? Or the long-delayed code of conduct for parliamentarians? As Finance Minister Colm Imbert might say when he presents his Budget: every little counts.

Do something.

He took the oath of Senator before Senate President Christine Kangaloo at the start of yesterday’s sitting of the Senate.

Le Hunte filled the vacancy left by former senator Walede Michael Coppin whose position was revoked on August 24 to accommodate his ministerial appointment.

Le Hunte’s initial appointment as Minister of Public Utilities was revoked days after he was sworn in, in August due to having dual citizenship, a position he has since rectified.

He gave the assurance at the third leg of his “National Conversations” held on Wednesday at St Augustine Secondary School in reply to a question from the floor. “Let me ask you a question: On what basis will the daughter of AV Drilling be suspended?” The questioner replied that her father is now under probe. Rowley said, “He is being investigated.

And you think the daughter should be suspended? That doesn’t sound to me as though they are connected. Unless of course you are making an allegation against the daughter. I do not find that that is a reasonable conclusion.” With most questions posed on youth and schooling, Rowley urged the population to reach out to their local schools in a spirit of voluntarism.

He said there is nothing to stop a person from walking in a school, declaring their skills/talents and offering to help pupils.

Youth activist Nikoli Edwards suggested the “youth” portfolio be shifted from the Ministry of Sport to Ministry of Education.

The evening was filed with music planned and unplanned and very reminiscent of how DJ loved her limes. Artiste after artiste took to the stage to play and sing in her memory.

Joey Rivers and Robert Munro were exceptional as well as Arthur Marcial.

Performers included David Boothman, Dean Williams, Tony Paul, Gary Cordner, singing sensation Bri Celestine as well as Sharlene Samuel, a quiet powerhouse, John John and Mikhail Salcedo.

Deborah’s brother Tony delivered a poem between all the music which was well received.

It was a pleasure to see how the musicians just fell in with their instruments and played their hearts out. Tony John and his section decided to play drums and cowbells after the music died and lured Carl Jacobs into the routine and the tribute seemed endless.

Paul Keens-Douglas was in the audience and showed his appreciation for the music that was played. Here are some highlights from the tribute.

Police reported that shortly after 10, the four men forced their way into the house and held up the family at gunpoint. The house was ransacked and thousands of dollars in jewelry and household items were seized. One of the intruders then took the 19-year-old to a bedroom where he sexually assaulted her.

The bandits later fled the scene. A report was made to the police and officers quickly set up roadblocks. With the assistance of the National Operations Centre (NOC) Air Division, police subsequently captured a suspect from the Claxton Bay area. Although none of the loot was recovered, police said the suspect confessed to the crimes.

The suspect, who is in his early 20s, remains in police custody assisting with investigations. The teen was taken to hospital where she was medically examined and also treated. She is said to be receiving counselling.

Investigations are continuing.

He made this comment yesterday before hinting that Finance Minister Colm Imbert could announce the date for the 2017/2018 Budget today in the House of Representatives. The House sits at Tower D of the Port of Spain International Waterfront Centre.

With Imbert looking on as he addressed the post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, Rowley said there was an established practice whereby finance ministers announce budget dates.

Last week, Imbert said he would make a statement about the Budget this week.

Asked to describe the country’s current economic position, Rowley replied, “ Not very good.” He recalled that TT enjoyed a period of good revenues from 2003 to 2015, much of which came from its export of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Rowley said negotiations with Atlantic for a new gas supply contract for its train one are ongoing at this time. The contract expires next year.

While TT was able to save much of those revenues and use it for critical activities, Rowley said some people were partying “very merrily” while gas supply contracts with several producers were not renewed. He said it was nonsense now for certain people to be calling for certain things to be provided, when TT no longer had the means to do so. Rowley did not comment on speculation the 2017/2018 Budget would be a $35 billion fiscal package. However, he recalled the budget increased steadily from $47 billion in 2010 under the PNM to $63 billion in 2015 under the People’s Partnership.

Rowley was confident the moratorium on public sector retrenchment with the labour movement would work but admitted that Government could not force the private sector to take a similar action.

He hoped, however, the private sector would not resort to retrenchment as a first option in times of economic difficulty.

The Prime Minister was also confident that the National Tripartite Advisory Council (NTAC) would be revamped.

He was heartened that labour was not pressing for wage increases but was instead looking for different ways to help workers.

Rowley said he was surprised that certain “energy voices” in the country had nothing to say about Government’s efforts to obtain gas from Venezuela’s Dragon Field.

He reiterated this agreement was with the Venezuelan government and was not contingent on its composition.

Answering questions at yesterday’s Senate sitting, Khan said, the report was finalised and was to be forwarded to him “for my attention this (yesterday) afternoon.” Asked if he had received the August 17 report, from which UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Sunday alleged that lease operator, A&V Oil and Gas Ltd had inflated its oil production figures and defrauded state-owned Petrotrin of about $100 million, Khan said, prior to the August 17 internal audit report, Petrotrin had submitted on August 4 an initial report to him “indicating that they have been recorded discrepancies in the volumes of oil shipped from the Exploration and Production Department to the volumes of oil received at the refinery.

Petrotrin has also reported that an internal audit was commissioned.

Procedurally, he said, the internal audit report would go to the audit committee of the board for its review and then to the full board for its consideration, deliberation and course of action to be taken. However, the report was leaked over the weekend, he said, and it is now in the public domain. The leak, he said, has gotten the whole population anxious as to what will happen but he cannot breach due process. He will await the submission of the report which he expects with a covering letter from Petrotrin.

Petrotrin’s board, he said, met urgently on Tuesday and Wednesday to consider the findings of the report.

Asked what steps he intends to take in dealing with the matter, Khan said, “to let due process take place.” The audit committee of the board and the board have considered the report, he said, “and they in their own judgement will determine what further actions or investigations are needed.

At this point in time, I cannot intervene and I will not intervene.” He was aware, he said, that Petrotrin had stopped payments in the amount of US$6 million to A&V for June and July when the audit was being conducted and pending the outcome of the investigations.

Among those grateful to be back on Trinidad soil were a group of teachers who were on contract to teach at schools in St Martin which was almost obliterated by the monster storm. Another group, mainly comprising people of the Muslim faith said they were in St Martin doing charitable work when the storm hit.

Some of those arriving said the storm was a terrifying experience that they did not know if they would survive.

A teacher who did not give her name, said that the hotel she was in when the storm struck was completely destroyed – except for the room she was in.

The Trinis were evacuated to Antigua and from there, arrangements were made for their return home last night.

Hurricane Irma claimed the lives of over 40 people when it slammed into several Caribbean islands before making a beeline for the southern United States, hitting Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Over 15 deaths were attributed to Irma in the US.