Trinidad: Second opposition MP thrown out of parliament in two weeks

(Trinidad Guardian) For the sec­ond week in a row, an Op­po­si­tion Par­lia­men­tar­i­an—this time a Sen­a­tor—was put out of the Par­lia­ment cham­ber.

Last week it was UNC MP Bar­ry Padarath who was evict­ed from the Par­lia­ment cham­ber by the House Speak­er for in­sist­ing on rais­ing wa­ter short­age in his con­stituen­cy. Yes­ter­day it was Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Tahar­qa Obi­ka for an of­fen­sive re­mark.

The sit­u­a­tion oc­curred when Obi­ka asked For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses about Ugan­dan na­tion­als who were ter­mi­nat­ed from T&T’s High Com­mis­sion in Ugan­da and if they were paid ter­mi­nal ben­e­fits in ac­cor­dance with their terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment.

Moses said eight Ugan­dan na­tion­als were ter­mi­nat­ed from the High Com­mis­sion and the lo­cal­ly re­cruit­ed staff were paid ter­mi­nal ben­e­fits ac­cord­ing to con­tract. Obi­ka probed on whether there had been com­plaints—from Ugan­da—or any per­son—on the is­sue. Moses ducked re­ply­ing, on­ly say­ing Gov­ern­ment had met all its oblig­a­tions. Obi­ka at­tempt­ed to ask fur­ther queries to get more in­for­ma­tion, but wasn’t al­lowed by the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent .

Obi­ka mut­tered in French in Moses’ di­rec­tion that he was a cat­a­stro­phe. Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, how­ev­er said, “I heard that.” She called on him to leave the Cham­ber un­til 2.30 pm. Obi­ka packed up and left, but re­turned at 3 pm for de­bate on a bill.

Al­so yes­ter­day on oth­er ter­mi­na­tion is­sues, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan replied to ques­tions about the ra­tio­nale for the re­cent dis­missal of 13 work­ers em­ployed to pro­vide con­ces­sion­aire ser­vices on the Galleons Pas­sage. He said they were em­ployed by Nid­co through a con­trac­tor to ser­vice pas­sen­gers on the Galleons Pas­sage.

He said Nid­co hired the in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor on an in­ter­im ba­sis to pro­vide ser­vices for the boat. He said any de­ci­sion by the con­trac­tor re­gard­ing em­ploy­ment or ter­mi­na­tion of its staff re­mains be­tween the con­trac­tors and work­ers.