Beckles calls on PM to face media on national issues

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to hold a press con­fer­ence, say­ing she has ques­tions to an­swer on a range of is­sues fac­ing the coun­try.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment had gone 12 weeks with­out hold­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, leav­ing what she de­scribed as se­ri­ous unan­swered ques­tions about its gov­er­nance. She cit­ed is­sues in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment, job loss­es, the econ­o­my, the State of Emer­gency, the pass­port short­age, the na­tion­al da­ta cen­tre, wa­ter short­ages, garbage col­lec­tion, en­er­gy pol­i­cy and for­eign af­fairs.

Beck­les al­so re­ferred to re­cent­ly pub­lished Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice fig­ures, which she said showed em­ploy­ment fell by 5,900 jobs in the first quar­ter of 2026 while the un­em­ploy­ment rate in­creased from 4.3 per cent to 5.4 per cent. She ar­gued that the fig­ures re­quired an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the Prime Min­is­ter.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should re­spond to con­cerns raised by the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador-des­ig­nate over the Gov­ern­ment's re­peat­ed use of States of Emer­gency.

Beck­les ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of try­ing to dis­tract from the is­sues and called on her to pro­vide ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy by hold­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence to ad­dress the na­tion.