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The Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary (OCS) of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly says it is seek­ing full clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment on the in­stal­la­tion of a Unit­ed States-sup­port­ed radar sys­tem at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, fol­low­ing pub­lic con­cerns trig­gered by com­ments from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Wednes­day.

In a me­dia re­lease, the OCS con­firmed that U.S. per­son­nel have been con­duct­ing works at the air­port, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of a radar sys­tem in­tend­ed to en­hance sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine stat­ed that he on­ly be­came aware of the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­fir­ma­tion af­ter com­plet­ing a live tele­vi­sion in­ter­view on To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 late Wednes­day. Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, his re­spons­es dur­ing that in­ter­view were based on the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to him at the time.

The Chief Sec­re­tary re­it­er­at­ed To­ba­go’s pos­ture of neu­tral­i­ty and stressed that while for­eign pol­i­cy de­ci­sions rest with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, the THA re­mains fo­cused on en­sur­ing the sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the is­land. He said he has since spo­ken di­rect­ly with the Prime Min­is­ter and re­quest­ed full de­tails on what is be­ing in­stalled.