Rowley due home today

PRIME Minister Dr Keith Rowley has accepted an invitation from Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell to attend the opening of the new Grenada Parliament building. Rowley left Trinidad yesterday afternoon and is expected to return sometime today.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert was acting as prime minister during Rowley's absence yesterday. This is Rowley's fourth overseas trip so far for the first half of this year. Last February 26 to 28, he visited Haiti for a Caricom leaders conference.

Rowley then visited London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and to meet oil firms BP and Shell, from April 15 to 24. He then visited China from May 14 to 19 to sign several MOUs, and then Australia to visit the Incat and Austal shipyards.

Last February, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young in Parliament defended the $2 million spent on the PM's eight overseas trips the previous year (2017) to promote trade as Rowley visited Houston in the US, Caracas in Venezuela, Jamaica and Chile.

Naparima MP Rodney Charles yesterday questioned the significance of Rowley's latest trip. “I am surprised that Rowley would go to Grenada for the opening of a building, which presumably has a nearby golf-course, when he did not attend a recent conference held in Guyana for Caricom Biodiversity Strategy," Charles said.

He noted that prime minister questions were due in Parliament yesterday. "Rowley has shirked and shifted his prime ministerial function of accounting to the Parliament to his junior (Imbert), to attend the opening of a building. Once again we see Rowley’s lack of foresight, inability to prioritise and inability to put national interests at the forefront."