The $250 million in foreign travel costs spent during the People’s Partnership’s (PP) term in office would have included costs for training abroad by military personnel, senior public servants and trade missions, United National Congress’ (UNC) spokesman Rodney Charles has said.
Charles in a statement yesterday responded to claims made by Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s at a People’s National Movement (PNM) political meeting last Friday.
He said: “That is an exceedingly small figure compared to the $340 million and the over $1 billion expended by the PNM on only two expenditure items in 2009 alone, the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) and Fifth Summit of the Americas.”
Charles said the sums spent in the PP’s tenure “led to unprecedented levels of achievement over the last five years which allowed T&T to punch above its weight internationally.
“So impressive was our standing in the international community during the People’s Partnership government, that Chinese President Xi Jinping made T&T the first country he visited in the western hemisphere since he became president.
“This led to significant Chinese investments in our country. In fact, foreign direct investment increased to over US$3 billion over the last five years, the highest it has been in many years.
“During the Kamla Persad-Bissessar government our country was able to negotiate a Schengen visa waiver for citizens travelling to all 28 countries of the European Union.“
He added: “The country also took successful, proactive steps to prevent the reintroduction of visas for citizens, including businessmen, travelling to the UK. Both Turkey and Peru have agreed to establish embassies in Port-of-Spain and a partial scope agreement was signed with Panama facilitating increased trade with that booming Central American country.”
“The country secured the appointments of then Justice Anthony Carmona, followed by Geoffrey Henderson to the International Criminal Court.
“Justice Anthony Lucky was appointed a judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea; Francis Charles to the UN Commission for the Limitation of the Continental Shelf, while Deborah Thomas-Felix was recently appointed a judge of the UN Appeal Tribunal. In addition Deodat Maharaj was appointed deputy Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
“The forgoing which is not exhaustive provides only a partial picture of some of our impressive foreign policy achievements suggesting excellent value for money for the $50 million a year spent on foreign travel over the last five years.”
False impression by Rowley—Suruj
Both former foreign affairs minister Winston Dookeran and former works minister Suruj Rambachan yesterday expressed concern at Rowley’s claim. Rowley had cited a Foreign Affairs Ministry bill of $30 million.
Dookeran said: “Obviously costs in the Foreign Affairs Ministry would have been within the course of duty. Innuendoes are not the way to run a Government, especially when one is in charge. Facts are what is used. They (PNM) are in government and they can easily get a list of travel and costs, the records are all there. The best way is to get the details in writing.
“Travel would have been conducted within the course of duty. There were various things that occasioned travel over the last term and ambassadors and heads of missions were also busy.
“In fact, I probably didn’t travel as much as I should have, to events. There are many reasons why people would have travelled, in fact, the job of the Foreign Affairs Ministry basically involves travel.”
Former foreign affairs minister Rambachan, who was also local government and works minister, said Rowley was being disingenuous and gave a false impression of travel costs since he had given a total figure and had not told the public how much of that was incurred by ministers and how much by public servants in the course of required ministerial travel.
“He must make it clear if the travel costs he has stated relates to travel by ministers or public servants since what he is giving is probably an aggregate sum for all ministries. In my case, when I was local government Minister, I travelled once to Uganda for a Commonwealth Local Government conference.
“When I was works minister, I didn’t travel at all. When I was in foreign affairs for two years, I made officially sanctioned trips.”