Unnecessary Registrar General commess

TUCKED away in the budget documents approved last week by MPs in the House of Representatives were several provisions for a department listed under Tobago’s Central Administration Services. About $2 million was allocated for personnel expenditure and $1.4 million for expenditure on goods and services by this department.

The department in question was described simply as “Registrar General,” presumably a reference to the Tobago office of the Registrar General’s Department, the country’s legal repository, which falls under the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Legal Affairs.

Whatever its causes, it’s disappointing the line in the sand that recently emerged between the department’s Trinidad operations and its dealings in Tobago.

While the impasse was partially resolved on Monday, it was an utterly unnecessary one, serving as the latest iteration of the arbitrary and absurd lines of division that have too often robbed Tobagonians of a sense of equality in our constitutional arrangements.

Last week, officials could not even agree on what was the genesis of the impasse. Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, on Friday announced he had commissioned legal advice on the situation, which, for him, related to “the co-relationship of the post of Registrar General and the Office of the Registrar General’s Department established in Tobago in November 1980.”

“There are legal issues of some vintage to be resolved,” he said, vaguely.

Meanwhile, according to Chief Secretary Farley Augustine, the matter related to the question of clerical access to systems by Tobago officials and a senior public servant in Trinidad. Those credentials were restored on Monday and the process of resuming full operations commenced. But not before Mr Augustine last week announced his own investigation.

What is clear is the inconvenience experienced by Tobagonians, as well as anyone in Tobago who had cause to access the department’s services.

Also clear is the symbolic damage done to relations between both islands.

The Registrar General’s Department oversees civil, land and commercial registration. It maintains the national archive of births, adoptions, marriages and deaths from 1893 onwards; records land titles; and maintains a register of companies and businesses. These are rudimentary functions, but they are of critical importance to civic life.

Mr Augustine had called on the Prime Minister to intervene in this matter, but Dr Rowley last week suggested it was more complicated than meets the eye. In the interest of clarity, Mr Armour should now release whatever advice he becomes in possession of and share this with Mr Augustine.

At the end of the day, it is embarrassing this impasse happened in the first place. It cements the view of many that fundamental differences of access exist between both our islands. That, in a nutshell, is the simple lesson of this “complex” matter.