PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — The Trinidad and Tobago government has denied that it has adopted an ethnic and gender balance policy and dismissed an opposition legislator’s accusation as being untrue.

Foreign Affairs Minister Suruj Rambachan said the near one-year-old Kamla Persad Bissessar government is committed to the system of meritocracy.

“I want to state that the policy of this government is a very clear policy. It is a policy that is based on meritocracy. The report can have anything, but the Government of Trinidad and Tobago has never said anything else except that meritocracy is going to be,” Rambachan said in Parliament yesterday.

“People are going to be judged by their ability, by their performance, not by the tint of their nose, the colour of their eyes or the tint of their hair, but they are going to be judged by their capacity to perform and equal opportunity is there for all under the People’s Partnership Government,” Rambachan said.

Earlier, former works and transport minister Colm Imbert, reading from a report and operational plan to reorganise and restructure the Special Anti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and Tobago, said the government-appointed committee had recommended “that concrete steps should be put in place to effect ethnic and gender balance in the composition of the new organization”.

The report was handed to National Security Minister Brigadier John Sandy last December.

The committee members included Deputy Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams, deputy director of the Strategic Services Agency Julie Browne, Jacqueline Wilson and Professor Daniel Gibran.

Imbert in his contribution to the Caricom Implementation Agency for Crime and Security Order 2011 debate, said the recommendation for ethnic and gender balance had been repeated at least twice in the report.

“I am reading from an official Government document which states that with respect to the creation of the new national intelligence agency, there will be when they are appointing and recruiting people, in the recruitment, they are going to ensure ethnic and gender balance,” he said.

Imbert also predicted that there would be “mass confusion” in a couple months, when all security intelligence agencies will be dismantled to make way for the National Intelligence Agency.

Imbert noted that in this process, all personnel from these agencies will be sent home.

“If that is going to happen, if you sending everybody home, how are you going to recruit and rearrange and reorganise the security agencies in Trinidad and Tobago so that there is effective communication cooperation, collaboration and integration within the regional security system, if you sending everybody home by the 31st of August, 2011?” asked Imbert.

According to the 2004 figures released by the Central Statistical Office, Trinidad and Tobago’s 1.3 million population consists of 37.5 per cent persons of African descent, 40 per cent East Indian descent with “Mixed” population accounting for 20.5 per cent.

Earlier this month, President George Maxwell Richards revoked the appointment of Nizam Mohammed, as chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) after he indicated that there had been a racial imbalance within the heirachy of the local police service.

Yesterday, noted criminologist and former independent legislator, Professor Ramesh Deosaran was appointed as the new PSC chairman.