Back To Today's News

Governor at Overseas Territories Meeting Published on Monday, December 14, 2009 Email To Friend    Print Version Governor Wetherell has been back in England in recent days and one item on his agenda was to attend the Overseas Territories Consultative Council meeting in London. At the conference, the affairs of the Turks and Caicos Islands were one of the principal subjects. The governor was accompanied by two Turks and Caicos Islanders -- a permanent secretary and a member of the Advisory Council. Governor Gordon Wetherell He did not announce his agenda or the reasons for his companions being on the trip. There have been increasing calls for an amount of capital funds to be made available to retire the tremendous debt the country was left with during the administration of the former Governor Tauwhare, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Minister Meg Munn and the internal self-government of the Progressive National Party (PNP). This debt currently exceeds an entire year’s income of the government. Stories are circulating that more redundancies are being considered by the current governor and CEO Mark Capes. Outcries from the unemployed are calling for labour reform to move belongers into private industry jobs. The economy, which was previously funded by the selling of Crown land and construction, is shrinking fast, leaving the possibility of a balanced budget in doubt. The current British FCO Minister, Chris Bryant, has issued public statements that appear to speak to both sides of the same issue. He indicates that the FCO wants to allow the maximum control of internal affairs to be handled by the overseas territories’ internal self-government, but he also appears to acknowledge responsibility for the conditions that now exist as a byproduct of lack of oversight. According to Bryant’s statements on the first day of the conference, “We want the maximum amount of self government possible and we have no desire to micro manage the economy in any the overseas territories …but I am also accountable to parliament and it would also be negligent of me if we did not take a keen and active interest in the economies and social well being of the overseas territories. Development across many of the territories, not the least in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the economic and financial services challenges that many of them face have in some cases put our relationship under strain. We have got a great deal to discuss and difficult issues to address.” Observers here are unable to determine which direction the current minister is heading: accountability for restrained oversight or seriously improved and responsible internal self government. Recently, Governor Wetherell said publicly that “they” had “inherited” a difficult situation. However, many here are claiming the lack of oversight and ignoring the outcries of the opposition leaders as well as private citizens since early 2007 was the cause of the situation. One observer told TCI Net News: “No reserves, overspent budgets, defaults on loans and building debt were ignored and Britain cannot escape responsibility for allowing this to happen under their governor and the Foreign Office” Governor Wetherell is not expected to return to the islands until early January.   Reads : 482 Back... Comments: No comments on this topic yet. Be the first one to submit a comment. Back... Send us your comments!   Send us your comments on this article for publication in our Readers' Forum or as a Letter to the Editor. All fields are required and in the interest of openness and transparency we will no longer accept anonymous submissions. We therefore request that all submissions include a name for publication, regardless of content. We will in special circumstances protect a writer's identity only after we have established good cause for anonymity, otherwise we will not be able to publish the submission. For your contribution to reach us, you must (a) provide a valid e-mail address and (b) click on the validation link that will be sent to the e-mail address you provide.  If the address is not valid or you don't click on the validation link, it will be a waste of your time typing your submission because we will never see it! Your Name: Your Email: (Validation required) Comments: Enter Validation Code *