An internal miscommunication is being blamed for a Parliament Facebook post which said Finance Minister Colm Imbert was expected to bring a motion to approve the 120th Salaries Review Commission (SRC) report at Monday’s sitting in the lower house.
A Parliament spokesperson confirmed this on Sunday.
The post was made at around 10 am on December 8 but was eventually removed.
"The SRC promo for the debate subject was an internal miscommunication and was inadvertently posted as one of the items to be addressed on Monday," the spokesperson said.
Although the motion does appear on Monday’s Order Paper, Leader of Government Business Camille Robinson-Regis explained that the debates scheduled for Monday were the approval of the draft Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) Order, 2024 and the bills to amend the constitution to accord Tobago self-governance as well as to repeal the Tobago House of Assembly Act and provide for the powers and functions of the Tobago Island Government and legislature.
Robinson-Regis said in a phone interview on Sunday that there was a motion about the SRC on the Order Paper but the matters for action on Monday were the EBC report and the two Tobago bills.
“The Facebook post on the Parliament’s page is inaccurate, there will be no such debate. The matters that are being debated are, in fact, the EBC report and we are doing committee stage of the two Tobago bills,” she said.
The Tobago bills had been on the Order Paper since 2021 and had also been in committee since then as well, she added. She said the committee stage was where the bills were examined clause by clause.
She said after the bills were debated in both houses (upper and lower) and all sides had spoken, the mover of the bills asked for them to go to the committee stage.
Prior to the bills being in the committee stage, they were before a Joint Select Committee (JSC).
While the committee stage had started for the Tobago bills, it had not been completed.
Tobago's Chief Secretary Farley Augustine questioned the government's "rush" to place the Tobago autonomy bills on Monday's Order Paper, a media report said on Saturday.
Augustine said the only time those bills came to Parliament was before a general election.
He also said the bills should not be rid of but improved upon. The bills required four things to be acceptable to Tobagonians: a federal-type system; clear Tobago boundaries in keeping with international law; equality of status between Trinidad and Tobago; and the right to make every decision over all matters surrounding Tobago and its people, Augustine said.
Robinson-Regis said section 141 (2) of the Constitution says the SRC report had to be laid in both houses after it was received by the President and Cabinet.
That had been done, she added.
She said she had no idea when the motion would be brought and the government did what the Constitution required.
Robinson-Regis said she was uncertain what accounted for the post.
The Order Paper gives a list of what is to be discussed in parliament o
