Kamla ‘OK’ with commute to PoS as PM residence repairs shelved

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she has no prob­lem con­tin­u­ing to com­mute from South Trinidad to Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion against un­der­tak­ing what is be­ing de­scribed as cost­ly re­pairs to make the PM’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence suit­able for her oc­cu­pa­tion.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter says she will have to check whether she qual­i­fies for a hous­ing al­lowance while re­main­ing at her pri­vate res­i­dence.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was on board with the de­ci­sion out­lined on Thurs­day by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who said the coun­try could not af­ford the ex­ten­sive work re­quired at the of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann’s.

“Yes, I’m ok with that. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple make the com­mute from south to Port-of-Spain to work, so it’s not a prob­lem,” she said.

Min­is­ter Padarath did not pro­vide a fig­ure on how much the re­pairs would cost to bring it up to live­able stan­dards.

The Prime Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, said the prop­er­ty would re­ceive main­te­nance to pre­vent its con­di­tion from wors­en­ing.

“The fa­cil­i­ty will not be al­lowed to fall in­to ru­in. They will en­sure it’s at least main­tained in the cur­rent state to pre­vent fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.”

Asked whether the un­avail­abil­i­ty of suit­able State ac­com­mo­da­tion qual­i­fies her for a hous­ing al­lowance, Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not con­firm that she was en­ti­tled to one.

“As for the hous­ing al­lowance, I will have to look in­to that to check if I would qual­i­fy.”

The Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s 120th Re­port pro­vides for a hous­ing al­lowance of $12,360 per month for gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, but does not spec­i­fy a cash hous­ing al­lowance for the Prime Min­is­ter. In­stead, it rec­om­mends that the Prime Min­is­ter be pro­vid­ed with “of­fi­cial res­i­dences, ful­ly fur­nished and main­tained by the State with the nec­es­sary com­ple­ment of house­hold staff.”

Padarath pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that no work had been un­der­tak­en on the res­i­den­tial sec­tion of the St Ann’s com­pound be­cause of the ex­pense in­volved.

The of­fi­cial res­i­dence and Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre are sep­a­rate fa­cil­i­ties on the com­pound.

While res­i­den­tial re­pairs have been de­ferred, Padarath said lim­it­ed work had been com­plet­ed at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre to im­prove its func­tion­al­i­ty, al­low­ing Cab­i­net meet­ings to take place there.

The ac­com­mo­da­tion is­sue al­so ex­tends to White­hall, where the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing al­ter­na­tive space for sev­er­al Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter de­part­ments.

The 2026/2027 Bud­get in­cludes $500,000 for a project ti­tled the White­hall Com­pan­ion Build­ing. Padarath said the pro­pos­al in­volves re­fur­bish­ing a build­ing pre­vi­ous­ly oc­cu­pied by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on Alexan­dra Street.

He said the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at had al­ready moved out of White­hall be­cause of mould, flood­ing and un­suit­able ac­com­mo­da­tion. Al­though re­me­di­al work has be­gun, fur­ther up­grades were iden­ti­fied as nec­es­sary be­fore the Sec­re­tari­at could re­turn.