Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s five-day trip to the United States to hold meetings “with high-level officials” from January 28 to February, 2024, cost taxpayers’ $818,262.97.
And Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal said yesterday he intends to file questions on the PM’s trips to ascertain the delegation, what meetings were attended, who invited them, the agenda and outcomes of the meetings.
The figure was revealed by the Office of the Prime Minister in response to a written question filed by Moonilal who asked how many times the Prime Minister travelled overseas between September 20, 2020 and February 29, 2024 and the cost of each trip inclusive of hotel accommodation, meals, ground transport for the Prime Minister and his entourage and other related expenses. The answer was supplied last Friday.
The written response revealed that $10.6 million was spent on 19 official trips taken by the Prime Minister in a 40-month period.
With respect to the trip to the US in January, the Prime Minister met with defence officials, including US Deputy Under Secretary of Defence at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns at the CIA’s Langley Headquarters in Virginia.
The Prime Minister also met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Trade Representative, Ambassador Katherine Tai, as well as Reta Jo Lewis, president and chair of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the US, during this trip, according to media releases issued by the Office of the Prime Minister at that time.
Moonilal also questioned whether the Prime Minister’s trip in May 2023 to receive his honorary Doctor of Letter degree from Howard University should have been paid for by the taxpayers. “It’s all very nice for the Prime Minister to get a degree but you should pay for that trip privately,” he said. The Prime Minister went in May 2023 for what was effectively about a six-day trip to the United States, which cost $400,000.
“He disguised that meeting to say that it was not only to receive his personal benefit, a personal award, (an honorary doctorate from Howard University) but stated that he met with ‘high-level government officials’. That was a trip where they were going from Starbucks coffee shop to McDonald’s to meet anybody in jacket and tie to create a meeting. They had no agenda. They had no invitation, $400,000 spent in six days in May 2023 for the Prime Minister to receive his personal award of a doctor of letters from Howard University,” Moonilal said..
The Oropouche MP said another trip that attracted his attention was the trip to Guyana in February of this year when the Prime Minister attended the International Energy Conference and Expo as well as the 46th Regular Meeting of Caricom in Guyana between February 18 and 29, 2024. The trip cost $452,895. Moonilal said he raised the fact that after the International Energy Conference and Expo ended, the Prime Minister was “loitering” in Guyana for a number of days before the start of the Caricom meeting. “He was on a tourist trip to Guyana. In fact it was a very weird development where President Irfaan Ali was in St Vincent so you had this rare development where a visiting head of government was in the country where the existing head of government had left,” Moonilal said.
Ground him!
Moonilal said the Prime Minister should be “grounded”, adding that he “spent $10 million in 36 months in foreign travel where there have been absolutely no benefits to the people of Trinidad and Tobago from these trips or others, is a matter that is shocking and scandalous and the Prime Minister ought to stop it. Cut it out now! I think we should clip his wings and ground him, seize his frequent flyer cards to ensure that he remains on the ground and face the problems that Trinidadians and Tobagonians face on a daily basis, which are crime, insecurity, poverty, joblessness, et cetera”.
Moonilal said the $10.6 million tab was “shocking and scandalous”. “That is almost $300,000 per month in foreign travel. This is untenable. It is scandalous that a Prime Minister can spend $300,000 per month on foreign travel. Many of those trips brought absolutely no benefit to the people of Trinidad and Tobago. This figure, of course, does not include the travel of his companion. Mr Stuart Young, who poses as a Minister of Energy, but he’s more of a gopher and (Jean) Passepartout (the fictional character of Jules Verne’s novel) of Around the World in 80 Days”. Moonilal said the $10.6 million bill excluded Young’s travel and expenses.
Moonilal also raised questions about the Prime Minister’s trip to Barbados to spend one day to attend “a banking meeting” with (congresswoman) Maxine Waters, which cost $127,000. The Prime Minister went to Washington in April 2022 as well to meet “what is called high-level officials of the government of the USA” which cost $382,000 for a three-day trip, over $100,000 per day, he said.
