Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris will file a po­lice re­port to­day against Sec­re­tary of Set­tle­ments, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Ian Pol­lard over what he con­sid­ers a di­rect threat made dur­ing a re­cent ple­nary sit­ting.

Mor­ris claims Pol­lard threat­ened to “send him home” dur­ing an ex­change in the de­bate last Thurs­day. He said he views the state­ment as se­ri­ous, giv­en his role as the pri­ma­ry wit­ness in an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­leged em­ploy­ment ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in Pol­lard’s di­vi­sion.

Dur­ing the ses­sion on Feb­ru­ary 27 it was dif­fi­cult to hear Pol­lard’s re­mark but Mor­ris is heard com­plain­ing to the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer.

“That is a threat to my life. Madam pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, the mem­ber just said he would send me home,” he said

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Mor­ris said he be­lieves the com­ment could amount to in­tim­i­da­tion, ob­struc­tion of jus­tice, or mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice.

“I am ex­treme­ly con­cerned with that very se­ri­ous threat of send­ing me home, all be­cause I am do­ing my pub­lic du­ty of en­sur­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and in­tegri­ty in the con­duct of their pub­lic af­fairs,” Mor­ris said.

He al­so claimed it was not the first time he felt threat­ened by Pol­lard. He re­called a pre­vi­ous in­ci­dent where the sec­re­tary al­leged­ly warned him, say­ing he had “Mus­lim friends” and that he would “deal with him.”

“That was the first threat some­time last year, and he has now dou­bled down on that threat by in­ti­mat­ing to me that he will send me home,” Mor­ris said.

He ex­plained that his con­cerns stem from his role in re­port­ing al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties with­in Pol­lard’s di­vi­sion to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

He said the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion ac­knowl­edged his com­plaint and lat­er in­vit­ed him for an in­ter­view on Jan­u­ary 14.

Mor­ris is call­ing for act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to in­ves­ti­gate and pro­vide him with pro­tec­tion.

At­tempts to reach Pol­lard were un­suc­cess­ful.