Junior Ministers reflect on 8 months in office

Af­ter eight months in of­fice, Ju­nior Min­is­ters Phillip Alexan­der, Clyde El­der and Ernesto Ke­sar say their work across Hous­ing, Pub­lic Util­i­ties and En­er­gy has been de­fined by in­tense prepa­ra­tion, prob­lem-solv­ing and a fo­cus on de­liv­er­ing tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments to cit­i­zens’ lives.

Speak­ing in sep­a­rate in­ter­views with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the three min­is­ters out­lined the re­al­i­ties they in­her­it­ed on en­ter­ing gov­ern­ment, the chal­lenges they faced and how their re­spec­tive roles are con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al re­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Phillip Alexan­der, de­scribed in­her­it­ing a min­istry “in some dis­ar­ray,” marked by in­sti­tu­tion­al dis­con­nects and fi­nan­cial strain with­in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and its re­lat­ed en­ti­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, the first months were dom­i­nat­ed by fact-find­ing, meet­ings with se­nior tech­ni­cal staff and sta­bil­is­ing op­er­a­tions un­der the lead­er­ship of Min­is­ter Dr David Lee and new­ly ap­point­ed HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan. That work, he said, was nec­es­sary to place the min­istry in a po­si­tion to com­plete stalled projects, ad­vance new de­vel­op­ments and pre­pare for pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships aligned with the Prime Min­is­ter’s hous­ing man­date.

Among the min­istry’s key achieve­ments so far, Alexan­der point­ed to get­ting fi­nances un­der con­trol, ad­dress­ing in­her­it­ed debt and stream­lin­ing op­er­a­tions de­spite lim­it­ed funds in the cur­rent bud­get cy­cle.

Look­ing ahead, Alexan­der said his goal is to help ac­cel­er­ate hous­ing de­liv­ery, learn from in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and raise na­tion­al hous­ing stan­dards.

Clyde El­der de­scribed his role in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties as pri­mar­i­ly sup­port­ive but deeply peo­ple-cen­tred.

Work­ing along­side line min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, El­der said re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are shared strate­gi­cal­ly, with ju­nior min­is­ters lead­ing on spe­cif­ic state en­ti­ties and pol­i­cy ar­eas, in­clud­ing labour re­la­tions across com­pa­nies such as WASA, T&TEC, TSTT and TTPost.

For him, the most re­ward­ing as­pects of the role have been di­rect in­ter­ven­tions that changed lives. He re­count­ed the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of a fam­i­ly’s home for the first time, made pos­si­ble through vol­un­teer ef­forts by T&TEC staff, and the ex­ten­sion of wa­ter sup­ply to a rur­al vil­lage where res­i­dents had lived with­out piped wa­ter for decades.

“These are the mo­ments that re­mind you why pub­lic ser­vice mat­ters,” El­der said, adding that ac­cess to ba­sic util­i­ties such as wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty un­der­pins dig­ni­ty, health and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Look­ing ahead, he out­lined plans to chair an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee aimed at bet­ter co-or­di­na­tion of in­fra­struc­ture works, in­clud­ing a pro­posed “one-dig” pol­i­cy to re­duce re­peat­ed road ex­ca­va­tion by dif­fer­ent util­i­ties. He al­so point­ed to up­com­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing sup­port for the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill and ex­pressed a per­son­al com­mit­ment to ex­tend­ing elec­tric­i­ty to un­der­served rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, draw­ing on his own child­hood ex­pe­ri­ence grow­ing up with­out it.

In the en­er­gy sec­tor, Ju­nior Min­is­ter Ernesto Ke­sar char­ac­terised his first eight months as a pe­ri­od of “se­ri­ous work,” fo­cused on re­pair, re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion and re­ju­ve­na­tion.

He said the min­istry moved quick­ly to ad­dress in­her­it­ed chal­lenges while lay­ing the ground­work for sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy ac­tiv­i­ty ex­pect­ed in 2026.

Ke­sar point­ed to on­go­ing and an­tic­i­pat­ed projects across the sec­tor and re­newed on­shore prospects that could strength­en na­tion­al gas re­serves.

He said these ef­forts are crit­i­cal giv­en the econ­o­my’s re­liance on en­er­gy and the pres­sures fac­ing T&T.

A ma­jor fo­cus for Ke­sar has been the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and its clo­sure, which he de­scribed as one of the most dam­ag­ing eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions in re­cent his­to­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly for south and cen­tral Trinidad.

He said the sub­mis­sion of the re­fin­ery restart com­mit­tee’s re­port marks an im­por­tant step to­ward ad­dress­ing the eco­nom­ic and so­cial dev­as­ta­tion ex­pe­ri­enced by for­mer work­ers and their fam­i­lies.

While ex­press­ing cau­tious op­ti­mism about the fu­ture, Ke­sar ac­knowl­edged that the econ­o­my re­mains frag­ile and much de­pends on the suc­cess of en­er­gy sec­tor re­forms and in­vest­ments in the com­ing year.

— Jesse Ramdeo