ST GEORGE’S, Grenada – Health Minister Ann Peters has confirmed that government ministers were receiving counselling following the internal rift that emerged following the decision of Prime Minister Tillman Thomas to re-shuffle his Cabinet late last month.
She said that team building and leadership to conflict management were among issues being addressed by the ministers after political tensions heightened following the Prime Minister’s move and the initial decision by three Cabinet members not to accept their new portfolios.
“I must say however that as part of the process of the development of the cabinet we have been embarking on a series of workshops and retreats” said Peters.
“We felt that it was important enough to expedite the process of doing it now so in the last two sessions that we have had so far we have been working with a consultant out of Barbados in the person of Dr. Basil Springer who is very good in the private sector.
“He is not a politician but he is very good at team building and conflict management and that is what we were embarking upon in the last two sessions that we have had with him,” she added.
The reshuffle, the second since the National Democratic Congress (NDC) came to office in 2008 resulted in the demotion of Environment and Foreign Trade Minister Michael Church, who later quit the Cabinet.
The other two protesting MPs, Peter David and Glynnis Roberts eventually took their oath of office a week later following mediation talks that also involved by Barbadian politician strategist Hartley Henry.
“They are things that we need to do on a monthly basis and they are things that we need to do to follow up based on whatever the monthly goal is. When the consultant would have done the session on leadership within the cabinet we would have been assigned certain things we have to do .it’s part of a building process” Peters said.
“We hope that this is the beginning of the norming stage where we would normalise and then really have things begin to happen,” she added. (CMC)
