St George’s, Grenada – Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell and two members of his Cabinet on Thursday declared their assets in accordance with the Integrity in Public Life Act.
Mitchell, along with Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Export Development Joseph Andall and Minister for Infrastructure and Physical Development, Public Utilities, Civil Aviation and Transportation, Dennis Cornwall, filed their Declarations of Assets, Income and Liabilities with the Integrity Commission.
The Commission had issued notices to 16 members of the new administration which came to office in June, providing them with a date for filing as well as detailed information on the filing process.
Speaking to the media after filing, Prime Minister Mitchell described the process as efficient but suggested it needed to go digital.
“In one sense, [it is] simple but a little exhausting [be]cause it forces you to take a look at your life and list everything that you basically own…. I would say one improvement is that I would like it to be electronic, rather than paper,” he said.
Chairperson of the Integrity Commission Lady A. Anande Trotman Joseph said she was pleased to see the Prime Minister taking the lead in his Cabinet and being the first to file his documents with the Commission.
“Today we’re very happy that the Cabinet has begun to declare to us as other Cabinets twice before have also done,” she said.
The Chairman explained that the filing the declarations was only one part of the process, the other part being the compliance process which is undertaken by a specified Compliance Officer at the Commission.
“We receive these declarations but we go further, we carry out a compliance exercise…we check to see if what they are saying is true against what is in our public registry,” she explained.
The Commission received requests for extensions from 11 public officials. The next filing date for this category of public officials is December 15. (CMC)
