The transition for some people appointed to head the various overseas missions of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has been anything but smooth, says Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble.
He told Parliament on Tuesday that while it was the government’s task to redefine and restructure the roles of overseas missions, the process has been challenging.
“The process of transition has been very disappointing, if I may say that, primarily because of some unfavourable realities that we have encountered and inherited,” Bramble said as he responded to a question from opposition senator, Keisal Peters, a former minister of foreign affairs.
He said that, for example, Kingstown’s Consul General to New York, Roland “Patel” Matthews, reported to him shortly after arriving in post, that the entire computer system at the consulate had been wiped.
“Completely wiped. No information on anything that happened in the consulate in New York was left there,” the foreign minister said.
“That is what we’re working with, and I can give you other examples,” Bramble said.
He told lawmakers that at the SVG High Commission in London, former High Commissioner Cenio Lewis had established a trust fund to assist children in SVG.
Lewis administered the trust fund, which also had another signatory.
Bramble did not identify the individual but said that the person was an advisor to the Unity Labour Party administration, which was voted out of office in November.
He said that since the new High Commissioner, Brereton Horne, took over the post, the signatories were refusing to hand over the trust fund.
“Naturally, if you have a new government with a new high commissioner and a new administrative process and structure in place, you would think that the former signatories would just hand over naturally,” the foreign minister said.
“But I want the people of this country to know and to rest assured that this foreign minister is not going to stop and just take that as it is,” said Bramble, a former diplomat.
“We will do what we have to do, we will investigate what we have to investigate and we will employ whatever legal and administrative and governmental processes to make sure that that is regularised,” Bramble said.
