IN AN interview with this publication done at his Kingston, Georgetown office yesterday, Local Government and Regional Development(LGRD) Minister Ganga Persaud condemned the INEWS-published article headlined “Local Govt. Minister dodges question on his absence at last sitting of Nat’l Assembly”; deeming that kind of journalism as indeed “uncouth”, and the reporter in question as having too much of “Kaieteur News remaining in her.”

He added that the reporter needs to realise that INEWS is a state-supported medium, and the reporter would need to alter her style of journalism to a more decent type.

He pointed out that he had listened to her question at the press conference on Tuesday, when she had asked that if the Government is so committed to holding local government elections, why is it that the Ministers of Local Government had missed two sittings of Parliament, wherein they would have been able to have presented and debated the local government bills which would have been passed last Wednesday in the National Assembly?

Minister Persaud asserted that he had indeed responded to her question, but she had again asked how come the minister was absent and no one knew specifically why he was absent?

The minister said he had responded to her question by stating very clearly that the Government’s commitment to holding the elections was clear, and the reason why we didn’t debate the bill when it came up was because the opposition would have tried to manipulate the Government’s Order Paper.

He said that when she asked the second time why he was absent, he politely asked her if she had never before been absent from an important function; “but she wanted to know the specific reason why I was absent, and that is when I told her ‘I don’t wish to share it with you’.”

He said that, as a minister, he would not go into the reason why he wasn’t there, but for her to misinterpret his response and mislead her readership with such statements is indeed very “uncouth”, and should have never happened.

He indicated that the bills would have been debated and passed in the National Assembly the very next day. Nevertheless, all is well now, and everyone is awaiting progression of the local government policy and elections.