For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has stepped up crit­i­cism of the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing it of fail­ing to act on con­cerns raised by Unit­ed King­dom au­thor­i­ties over a surge in asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions by Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate on the Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion and Pas­sen­ger Name Record (APIS/PNR) Bill, Sobers out­lined what he de­scribed as a pat­tern of in­ac­tion de­spite re­peat­ed warn­ings and high-lev­el en­gage­ments.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, af­ter all of these meet­ings, there was noth­ing tan­gi­bly done by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to al­lay the fears of the British Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the sig­nif­i­cant rise in asy­lum seek­ers trav­el­ling to the UK,” Sobers said.