It was a case of tit for tat over the hirings at the Minority Leader’s office as THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine questioned on whose authority short-term staff at the office were hired.

The question was posed to Minority Leader Kelvon Morris at the 18th plenary sitting of the THA 2021-2025 session held on Thursday at the Assembly Legislature, Scarborough.

Morris was at the time asking about late payments for his staff for February and March. In response, Augustine said the response would have to come from the Clerk of the House.

“The last time I checked, short-term employment requires having approval from a line secretary. I have not seen anything of that sort, I’ve also not seen at the executive council any notes for additional staffing at the office of the minority leader and therefore, I would ask the minority leader to direct that question to the clerk of the house.”

Morris said given that the matter is a longstanding issue, approximately one year and three to four months old, he met with Augustine early in the matter and was given several assurances. With that, he then questioned the chief secretary as to what are the circumstances as to why he is no longer interested in following up on the matter.

Augustine said: “At that initial meeting, I made it clear to the minority leader while I believe there was some additional staffing needed for his office and in that said meeting, I disagreed with the then chief administrator and the clerk of the house with regards to the selection of janitorial services.”

He said the desire at the time was to extend janitorial services from the legislature office to Morris’ office. He said at that time he was of the firm position that that must be a separate entity.

“Since that meeting, there has been no formal agreement on the staffing. There has been no formal agreement on what the staffing would be, how many they should be, until I recognise that people were hired already and were in fact being paid. Given that they were hired and being paid without any proper public service regulation processes in place the minority leader should direct his question to the person who took the authority to do such employment.”

[caption id="attachment_1018656" align="alignnone" width="775"] Minority Leader Kelvon Morris -[/caption]

Morris said given that he inherited a payment regime, a structure which was also one which the chief secretary himself benefitted from, he questioned why no executive council note was taken to the council although the matter was being addressed by councillor Certica Williams-Orr. But Augustine said while he served as a assemblyman on the minority side, his team never enjoyed any kind of employment at the levels that happen now.

“When we were in the office of the minority, the people who were paid for us – we had a cleaner/front-of-house person, we had a research officer, and we also had an office manager and there were some driving services available to us – that was it. What the minority leader got without any proper procedure in place, we n