Acting Prime Minister Colm Imbert has admitted that the People’s National Movement (PNM) Government has taken note of two independent polls conducted on its two-year performance in office.
One of the polls, the GML-commissioned Louis Bertrand pool was published in the T&T Guardian on Thursday.
Bertrand’s poll stated that the PNM administration was deemed to be taking the country “in the wrong direction” by the majority of respondents in a survey of Government’s performance in the last 24 months.
The findings of the opinion poll conducted by Bertrand’s HHB and Associates showed this to be the view of a startling 83 per cent of respondents. Crime and violence was ranked as the single most pressing problem facing T&T by 66 per cent of respondents.
Pressed on the poll’s findings yesterday, Imbert said the Government had taken note of it.
“We don’t ignore these things. But we don’t overreact either. So we have taken a note of it and go through the information and we will act accordingly.”
Everyday, Imbert said he reads the three daily newspapers, with the exception of the comic strips and classifieds.
“We read the papers every day. We read everything in the newspapers. We internalise it. We digest it,” he said.
“We look at it to determine if we agree with it or not. We determine what we need to do. We have taken note of everything that has been published.”
Imbert said this included the advice given by political analysts, who suggested that Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley take a firmer grip on his Cabinet as the polls were an indication of a wake-up call for the Government.
While the Government may not agree on some of the issues published, Imbert said: “If we don’t read the newspapers we would not be educating ourselves on how other people think about us.”
