Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation Dr Henry Jeffrey has expressed surprise that a Friday meeting of the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Foreign Re-lations on the EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) was not held on the grounds that he was late.
The minister said he was turning into the compound of Parliament five minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting when he was told that the meeting had been called off because only three members had turned up.
Stabroek News had reported in Saturday’s edition that the meeting was deferred because Jeffrey was absent. This information had been provided to Stabroek News by Parliament office staff.
On Saturday, the Minister told Stabroek News that he was about to enter the compound when he got the call. Jeffrey also said that it was obvious that he was going to be at the meeting since two of his staffers, Neville Totaram, who was on the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) team which negotiated the EPA, and Sherwyne Nauthon were already at Parliament.
Jeffrey said he was “almost turning into the Parliament building when my office called and said that they were called by the Parliament office and told that since there were only three members present the meeting is called off.”
He recalled that something similar happened late last year. When they were about to leave the ministry, the chairman of the committee Aubrey Norton “called off the meeting. It is the second time we are spending time preparing papers for Parliament and this has happened,” he said. Norton was not present for Friday’s meeting.
Jeffrey said that he was prepared for the meeting and made every attempt to get there before 3.30 pm when the meeting was scheduled to start anticipating that he would be at Parliament by 3:25 pm.
In an e-mail sent to Jeffrey and which Totaram also shared with Stabroek News, he (Totaram) said that he and Naughton arrived at Parliament Buildings about 3:20 pm. There he received a telephone call informing him that the meeting was off. They returned to their offices at Takuba Lodge.
Naughton, Totaram said, had “left an inter-agency meeting in progress at FSI (Foreign Service Institute), convened by MFA on Free Movement of Skills, to join us at Parliament Bldg. In addition to the 2nd Brief we had prepared and submitted to the Sub-Committee, I had prepared CD copies containing the EPA Agreement (Main text and annexes) and the 2nd Brief for each member of the Sub-Committee. (Naturally, we took these back to Office).” Stabroek News was also not informed that the meeting had been called off and arrived about 15 minutes after it was scheduled to start only to be told that it had been called off for want of a quorum.
When this newspaper telephoned Parliament office to confirm that the meeting was called off for a lack of quorum, it was told that it was called off because the minister was not present at the start of the meeting and a motion was put forward by one of the committee members to have the meeting put off to a later date.
Stabroek News learnt that at the start of the meeting there were three PPP/C MPs and no member of the opposition. An AFC MP arrived shortly after and a motion was put forward to postpone the meeting. None of the three PNCR-1G MPs on the committee was present. (Miranda La Rose)
