PM as US-Venezuela tensions continue:

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment will not en­gage in spec­u­la­tion about how Trinidad and To­ba­go would re­spond if the Unit­ed States ini­ti­ates land strikes in Venezuela, po­ten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing mass mi­gra­tion across the re­gion.

Speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing the reded­i­ca­tion of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter was asked whether her ad­min­is­tra­tion had a plan in place should such a sce­nario un­fold.

She replied firm­ly:

“I will not spec­u­late. When that time comes, we’ll deal with it. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Pressed fur­ther on the is­sue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained her po­si­tion, de­clin­ing to out­line any prepara­to­ry strat­e­gy or con­tin­gency mea­sures.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so dis­tanced her­self from ques­tions about the con­tro­ver­sial “dou­ble-tap strike” tac­tic on an al­leged drug boat re­port­ed­ly de­fend­ed by the US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

When asked for her views, she ap­peared un­fa­mil­iar with the term.

“I’m so sor­ry—on the what? The dou­ble-tap strike? I don’t know what that is,” she said.

When the term was clar­i­fied, she re­spond­ed: “I’ll have to re­search it. Some­times you ask me ques­tions and I don’t have the back­ground in­for­ma­tion, and then I’m trapped in­to an an­swer. So, I pre­fer to re­search be­fore I re­spond.”

When told that some law­mak­ers be­lieve such strikes could con­sti­tute ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings, she again said she need­ed more in­for­ma­tion be­fore com­ment­ing.

Ad­dress­ing ques­tions about the role of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al in the on­go­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed the of­fice re­mains in­de­pen­dent.

“To the best of my knowl­edge, it is in­de­pen­dent,” she said.

She ex­plained that while Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lish­es broad pol­i­cy pa­ra­me­ters, it does not di­rect the CPO on spe­cif­ic ne­go­ti­a­tion items.

“We do not tell the CPO, ‘give them this or that’. The pol­i­cy di­rec­tion is what the gov­ern­ment is able—or not able—to meet. But we do not de­ter­mine the spe­cif­ic items,” she said.

Her com­ments fol­lowed pub­lic de­bate over whether the CPO op­er­ates un­der the in­flu­ence of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the progress of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal af­ter near­ly a decade of dor­man­cy, the Prime Min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed that ser­vices are be­ing rolled out sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly.

“We are open­ing in phas­es,” she said.

“In just a few short months, we are where we are to­day, and fur­ther out­reach con­tin­ues.”

She clar­i­fied that the es­ti­mat­ed $78 mil­lion restora­tion cost in­cludes not on­ly med­ical tech­nol­o­gy, but al­so me­chan­i­cal, plumb­ing and oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al works.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe added that the fa­cil­i­ty will ex­pand in­to sec­ondary and ter­tiary ser­vices, with pri­or­i­ty ar­eas such as cataracts, oph­thal­mol­o­gy, and urol­o­gy be­ing ad­dressed to re­duce the na­tion­al surgery back­log.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment would con­sid­er fi­nan­cial sup­port for teenagers and young adults bat­tling can­cer who are not cov­ered un­der the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed:

“It is a mat­ter we can cer­tain­ly look to. I’m not say­ing no or yes. I like to re­search mat­ters and get ad­vice be­fore I make a state­ment.”

She al­so con­firmed that Par­lia­ment is ex­pect­ed to send re­cent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion—in­clud­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Sum­ma­ry Of­fences amend­ments—to the Pres­i­dent soon, and said she hoped as­sent would be grant­ed be­fore year’s end. (See Page 10)