Save Us From Valley’s deep sleep

THE EDITOR: No one can legitimately complain should Minister Valley fall asleep on the job while struggling to fulfil his onerous domestic obligations. He enjoys a right to privacy. But when the said Minister Valley is returning from official duties on board a Coast Guard aircraft in the august company of the Honourable Prime Minister and drifts into such a deep slumber that not even a small, I assume non-pressurised, aircraft rapidly plunging in fatal and near catastrophic descent can rouse him from this slumber, then this is cause for taxpayers’ concern. We cannot trust him to be on the lookout for our Caricom trade interests because on his own boastful admission he falls asleep quickly on the job, that is to say out like a light.

It would appear that Minister Valley must have once again succumbed in Parliament recently. He may have been unceremoniously awakened from his deep siesta by the erudite contribution of the member of St Augustine and former Central Banker the Hon Winston Dookeran on the Variation of Appropriation Bill (Newsday Jan 15, p 6) relating to the scandalous $120m LIAT bailout. Apparently not fully awakened from his usual deep slumber in the Chamber, Minister Valley blurted out, that the $300m credited to the TT Caricom Oil Factory that was allocated exclusively by PM Manning for poverty eradication and to be administered by the CDB was, in his own words, now Heads of Government (HOG) money.

In spite of this conditionality that the CDB/HOG must adhere to and the fact that TT is a member of the HOG and can restrict the use of the money, as prescribed, Minister Valley admits that the HOG knows better how to use our own money than he and our Government. Can they also use it to buy oil from Venezuela as they did previously? Did Minister Valley listen attentively to the address delivered by his PM Manning at the last November HOG conference held in Port-of-Spain in which the PM outlined the conditionality to access the Oil Fund? Or does the mere sight/sound of PM Manning, in this case, praying for his life, lull Minister Valley into an irresistible and compelling slumber?

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni