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Integrity, accountability, financial prudence and consequence management are not simply partisan political issues. They relate to the socio-economic health and well-being of our country and are or should be of concern to the wider public.
Moreover, indifference to these issues undermines trust and confidence that the country’s resources are being managed with a reasonable degree of fairness, and gives rise to resentment.
Photo: Ministry of Sport.
As a result of the recent change of government, the governance of bodies owned or controlled by the state has returned to being high-profile news. These bodies are commonly known as state enterprises, and their boards are commonly known as state boards.
This return of the composition of these state boards to high-profile examination is the natural consequence of the mass resignations of their members, gossip about the replacements appointed by the new government and accusations in Parliament.
Long-standing doubts about integrity and accountability have resurfaced over the past few weeks.
Photo: Ministry of Public Utilities.
By way of example of the current hand-wringing, an editorial in the Newsday on 4 June 2025, was entitled State enterprises a law unto themselves. That editorial usefully summarised “the huge chunks of the budget that pass through them”.
It concluded that there is “a need for the state to make a rational choice: either it lets the private sector run things in a mass divestment drive, or it passes legislation to exert better and clearer levers of control”.
Therefore, it is appropriate this week to point out again the embedded hazards to integrity, accountability, and financial prudence in the state enterprise system. Because the system’s vehicles of state participation in the economy and in the provision of essential public utilities are under partisan political control.
Photo: UNC.
Twenty years ago, I pointed out the mischief of this set-up. See Interfering intravenously published in the Trinidad Express on 11 August 2002.
Seven years later, in February 2009, I went before the Uff Commission on my own initiative to make the Commission aware of what I perceived as the manipulation of the state enterprise system.
These enterprises provide employment for substantial numbers of people, enter into contracts, and provide other benefits that could be seen as political favours in a scenario where ministers, in fact, control events.
They do so by giving directions or by conveying informal messages or hints to the chairman, other board members, or managers as to what the line minister, or some other minister, might want done.
As some readers may recall, the Uff Commission (named after its Chairman Professor John Uff KC) was a commission of inquiry charged with inquiring into the construction sector.
The appointment of the Commission was triggered by allegations about the conduct of the Urban Development Company of Trinidad and Tobago (Udecott) and its then chairman, Calder Hart.
(Copyright The Globe and Mail.)
Udecott is a state enterprise and had then, and still has, a huge role in the construction industry on behalf of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, even though it is a body incorporated under the Companies Act. An appointment to chair Udecott is a ripe mango political appointment.
Other than the belated introduction of limited procurement legislation (about the effectiveness of which it is too early to tell), has anything changed? Has the susceptibility of state enterprises to partisan political manipulation been curtailed?
Once either party wins a general election and becomes the government, it has Udecott and many other state enterprises under its control.
Photo: Ministry of Sport.
The Uff recommendations for significant ministerial accountability have been ignored by the governments that came into power subsequently.
As to “levers of control” and oversight of these state enterprises, why is no one demanding that parliament more diligently fulfils its duties set out in sections 119 (5) to (8) of the Constitution regarding the Public Accounts [Enterprises] Committee?
These duties are to receive and report on the accounts and financial information of state enterprises. There is a lack of diligence because the financial information is frequently presented five or more years late without consequences.
Photo: Sunil Lalla.
As I have suggested before, this situation suits our politicians and their supporters, no matter how much the political rivals “cuss up” each other. It is a graphic example of why, upon a change of the party in government, citizens are compelled to ask whether it is “change or exchange”.
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