Chief Sec: THA spent $11.6m on overseas travel in 3 years

THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine has revealed that his administration has spent over $11.6 million in overseas travel over its three years in office.

He made the disclosure on May 23 while responding to a question from Minority councillor Petal Daniel-Benoit during the plenary sitting in the Assembly Legislature, Scarborough.

Daniel-Benoit wanted to know the parliamentary and revised allocations as well as the expenditure on overseas travel for fiscal 2022, 2023 and 2024, to date.

Augustine said, “As for the total actual expenditure of overseas travel over the past three years...for the entire THA – that includes secretaries, assistant secretaries, public servants, contracted workers, students, anybody the THA send anywhere outside of TT, including the Minority Leader – over the three years is $11,603, 565.”

He added the sum is just $1.6 million more than what the Prime Minister spent on overseas travel over the same period.

“As a matter of fact, Madam Presiding Officer, self-hating Tobagonians...will agree with the Prime Minister spending $10 million as an individual public official across three years and will not want the entire THA, with all of its components, spending close to that. Anybody who has a problem with that is a self-hating Tobagonian and...prefers party over self, Madam Presiding Officer.”

Augustine promised to go public with all the data because, he claimed, "There has been somebody going around with a nasty lie" that he spent $20 million in three years.

Daniel-Benoit, as a follow-up, also called on Augustine to say how Tobago benefited from the trips

He said the question was broad.

“The objectives and achievements are very far and wide and will include everything from attracting investors to being able to lock down deals with foreign airlines such as Condor, which happened while we met at ITB Germany, and maintaining our relationship with BA (British Airways).

“It includes treating with tour companies and those who market Tobago abroad.

"It includes meeting with members of the diaspora and ensuring that they can return home and they can reinvest in their homeland.

"It includes taking students abroad.

“It includes sending public servants with technical training and exposure all over the world. It includes sending health professionals, doctors and nurses abroad.

"It includes even sending the Minority to Ghana, London and elsewhere. So that is a very far-reaching question.”

He said the Minority bench was hoping to “get a 'gotcha' moment.

“They were hoping to hoodwink the population with a great big lie.

"But this is really the red face of hypocrisy. That is what this is. Because it cannot be okay, acceptable, justified for the prime minister to represent the country, to go looking for interests, investments and being TT’s biggest seller, and on the converse, somehow it is a problem if the entire THA, with all its functionalities – this is not just secretaries and assistant secretaries, inno. This includes everybody across the whole THA actually travelling at a cost of $11.6 million, $1.6 million more than a single public official… Come on, let us be mature about this thing.”

Daniel-Benoit, noting the Divisions of Education and Community Development, had already exceeded their revised allocations for overseas travel for this fiscal year, called on Augustine to say how he planned to address this.

“We are still a few months away from the end of the financial year. Is it that there will be no overseas travel for these divisions that are already over? What is in place?”

Augustine responded, “Madam Presiding Officer, if those respective divisions bring to the executive council a request that is valid, that is justifiable and makes sense, that will improve benefits or redound benefits to the people of Tobago, the executive council is prepared to make further adjustments to satisfy that demand as the case may be. It’s a case-by-case situation.”