PM: No difficulty with appointment

McDonald replaces Fitzgerald Hinds as Public Utilities Minister with Hinds now a Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General.

At the post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday Rowley said Mc- Donald was first appointed to the Cabinet in 2015 and it was then when people were making “disturbing allegations.” He said there was one particular block of allegations which caused him to ask McDonald to remove herself as Housing Minister, since it dealt with how she conducted herself at that ministry.

“Those investigations to my knowledge have taken place by the authority whose job it is to determine whether a person in public life has conducted him or herself in a manner in keeping with the tenets of the Integrity of Public life Act,” Rowley said.

He said that last October, the Integrity Commission indicated to McDonald that they found no basis that she breached the Integrity of Public Life Act and on that finding, he had no difficulty in reappointing her.

On Hinds’ new appointment he said the main reason behind this move was to assist the Attorney General’s office as there will be a lot of activity in the coming year.

“You would have seen that we are pushing through the Parliament a very aggressive legislative programme and in that programme a lot of it has to do with the criminal justice system and also, we have a very big item which should be landing in Parliament at the beginning of the next term. And that is this whole question of Tobago’s self government discussions.” He said Hinds was very versatile and is a tremendous asset to Government. On former Energy Minister Nicole Olivierre’s re-emergence as a Parliamentary Secretary in that ministry and whether this was done to assist Energy Minister Franklin Khan who is still recuperating from major surgery, Rowley said, “a little way yes.” “But it’s more related to the workload of the ministry and assignments the ministry will be undertaking all in the context of doing things that have been left behind for too long,” he said. He said the Ministry was not what it used to be in terms of the amount of experience and expertise and as a result, things have fallen by the way side.

(See Page 9A)