Rowley wants apology for Tobagonians after Registrar General's Office fiasco

The Prime Minister says Tobago’s citizens should never have been inconvenienced when the Registrar General’s Tobago office was closed recently, forcing them to travel to Trinidad to register births, deaths and obtain other crucial services.

Dr Keith Rowley said he was immediately alarmed after hearing about the situation in the media but said his understanding of the situation was vastly different to the accounts given by public officials and politicians in Tobago.

Speaking at a post-Cabinet media briefing on Thursday, Rowley said he was alarmed to learn that the facts of the matter concerning the Registrar General's office in Tobago contradicted what was initially reported in the media.

He said the office in Tobago needs to apologise to those affected.

Earlier this week, Registrar General Karen Bridgewater-Taylor explained the situation in a letter to staff, saying a worker who was asked to undergo specific software training in Trinidad, refused to do so, claiming that such an instruction could come only from the permanent secretary (PS) at the Central Administrative Services in Tobago.

She also said that rather than staff being locked out of the computer system, someone from Trinidad who was sent to assist, was instead locked out of the office by security, after being instructed to do so by a “senior officer.”

“It is alarming that a senior officer of the Registrar General’s Department was humiliated and traumatised in such a way while merely going to perform her lawful duty pursuant to instructions of the Registrar General," she wrote. "Such an incident has never happened before in the history of (the department)."

In the post-Cabinet briefing, Rowley added that, instead of responding to that “reasonable situation” (training in Trinidad), the officer in Tobago declined, “because you are a Trinidad public servant and my instructions (should) come from Tobago PS.”

He described the situation as a “public service shortcoming.”

Rowley said, “I do not know this particular thing has anything to do with (Tobago’s) autonomy. The law exists. If it is to be changed, then we work towards changing it. But we work with the law as it exists.

The Registrar General’s office in Tobago, he reiterated, is a part of the wider Registrar General’s office.

“I just had a meeting with the public service to find out if the public service has gone mad because this is not a singular arrangement,” he said.

“Something is very wrong and I have asked the Attorney General for guidance so that the government can speak to the Public Service Commission. So whatever Kool-Aid they’re drinking, they better understand that we are all here to serve the public.

“That inconvenience to the people of Tobago that occurred there ought to never happen again because all the arrangements were in place for the people of Tobago to have a continuous service and everybody.”

Before speaking specifically about the matter of the Registrar General’s Tobago office at the post-Cabinet briefing, Rowley suggested there was growing disconnect between Tobago and the Central government, instigated by both public officers and politicians.

“There are people in Tobago who are taking the position that there is some bruising dichotomy between the THA and its executive authority and the Central Government and that they are competing for Tobago.

“That conversation,” Rowley said, “is not confined only to the political voices. It is finding itself garnering support from the people who may be (not necessarily in political office but also) in public office. And if that is so and those persons think they can be guided by that political narrative and act it out, then you can get problems like that.”

Rowley also referred to a situation in Tobago in which licensing officers went to Tobago and “picked up” the wife of someone in public office in a street exercise.

“The next thing you know, is that the licensing officers were described as ‘invaders from Trinidad, who are not welcome in Tobago…’ And they (licensing officers) were locked out of the office in Tobago.

“And then the Tobago politicians started questioning the authority of the licensing and transport department in Tobago.”