Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­spond­ed to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter's bud­get state­ment on Sep­tem­ber 12. Fol­low­ing is the full text of his re­sponse.

Mr Speak­er this would be the twen­ty-fourthoc­ca­sion that I would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a bud­get de­bate in this ho­n­ourable house. For the fifth­time as op­po­si­tion leader, I am priv­i­leged to be called up­on to re­spond to the bud­get state­ment of the min­is­ter of fi­nance. This I con­sid­er not just as a du­ty but al­so an ho­n­our as I act on be­half of all the peo­ple of T&T.

Mr. Speak­er T&T is not a bas­ket case. In fact, for decades our favourable cir­cum­stances have placed us among the more for­tu­nate in the re­gion and I dare say the world. That hav­ing been said Mr Speak­er, the peo­ple of T&T have every right to har­bour ex­pec­ta­tions of a bet­ter life as we pro­ceed to de­vel­op our na­tion from year to year and from ad­min­is­tra­tion to ad­min­is­tra­tion. Along the way on this jour­ney there have been and will al­ways be highs and lows, twists and turns–for that is life, but how we cope with the in­evitable hur­dles will large­ly de­pend on the qual­i­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness of the lead­er­ship which is brought to bear on our cir­cum­stances what­ev­er they may be.

It is against this back­ground that what­ev­er else we do to­day Sep­tem­ber 12, 2015 we can­not prop­er­ly ad­dress this as­sign­ment with­out re­view­ing and as­sess­ing this gov­ern­ment and the na­tion­al chal­lenges as they ex­ist­ed or were per­ceived in 2010 (four­bud­gets ago) as against where we are to­day. In short, Mr Speak­er, we com­pare what we set out to do as against what we have ac­com­plished. It is here that the bud­get­ing process is lo­cat­ed, that is, what we have earned what we have spent and how well we have ob­tained val­ue for mon­ey in fix­ing the na­tion's prob­lems as we pay our way for­ward.

This is an op­por­tune time to re­mind you, Mr Speak­er, that we on this side, in a unique demon­stra­tion of co­op­er­a­tion for the na­tion­al good, vot­ed for the 2010 Bud­get as pre­sent­ed by this gov­ern­ment. Armed with this "send-off", the gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ed to fail, and to do so spec­tac­u­lar­ly and reg­u­lar­ly. That is why, know­ing that they have failed, last week­end, on the eve of the gov­ern­ment's fifth bud­get state­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to pref­acethis bud­get by re­peat­ing their elec­tion cam­paign mantra of "the trea­sury emp­ty".The Prime Min­is­ter said the PNM left the coun­try with a fis­cal deficit of six per­cent of GDP. Noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth Mr. Speak­er!Here are the facts based, in part, on in­for­ma­tion from the Cen­tral Bank's An­nu­al Eco­nom­ic Sur­vey and the Cen­tral Bank's Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin, Ju­ly 2010, Cen­tral Bank Sta­tis­ti­cal Di­gest, Dec 2010:

2 At the end of the fis­cal pe­ri­od 2008/2009 there was an over­all deficit bal­ance of $ 6.6 bn T&T, which was about five per­cent of GDP

2 At the end of May 2010, just when the PP took of­fice, the deficit had dwin­dled to $77.9 mil T&T and not 6% of GDP as stat­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter

2 At the end of Sep­tem­ber 2010 the over­all bal­ance from gov­ern­ment's fis­cal op­er­a­tions was a sur­plus of $188 mil T&T

In the face of record high oil prices (at over $100 per bar­rel) and sus­tained gas prices well above the bud­get­ed lev­els, this gov­ern­ment has op­er­at­ed a sig­nif­i­cant bud­get deficit in every year of its ex­is­tence. With that em­bar­rass­ing fact as its lega­cy the Gov­ern­ment is now look­ing for PNM com­pa­ny by at­tempt­ing to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion so as not to held ac­count­able for its own fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. We will have none of it! The truth must be told our chil­dren, notwith­stand­ing the best ef­forts of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, to tell them dif­fer­ent­ly.

Con­trary to what they are now try­ing ped­dle to the pop­u­la­tion, ex­cept for 2009, the year of the Glob­al Col­lapse/Re­ces­sion which af­fect­ed us here, the pre­vi­ous PNM Gov­ern­ment had been con­sis­tent­ly run­ning bud­get sur­plus­es as fol­lows

Source: Cen­tral Bank An­nu­al Eco­nom­ic Sur­vey

Com­pare that with da­ta from the Min­istry of Fi­nance's own Re­view of the Econ­o­my gen­er­at­ed by the bud­get di­vi­sion which show:

The Prime Min­is­ter's state­ment on this mat­ter and the nu­mer­ous in­stances of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance not com­ing clean in this bud­get con­firms that we can­not trust any­thing this gov­ern­ment tells us. What they do not at­tempt to hide by omis­sion they mis­rep­re­sent in naked un­truths.

In or­der to have us at their mer­cy on these mat­ters they have vir­tu­al­ly shut down the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) so that for the first time, in my mem­o­ry, there is no in­de­pen­dent CSO da­ta on which to base our ref­er­ences and re­views. We are con­fined to the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Cen­tral Bank for sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion about the eco­nom­ic and oth­er per­for­mances of the coun­try. The CSO doesn't even have us­able of­fice space, with its staff de­mor­alised, drift­ing in the streets with or with­out plac­ards. The gov­ern­ment just does not care.

Mr Speak­er 2006/2008 were the peak years of this coun­try's earn­ing and de­vel­op­ment just pri­or to the 2009 glob­al eco­nom­ic col­lapse. That oc­cur­rence found our coun­try en­gaged in a se­ries of pro­gres­sive de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives all of which were round­ly con­demned by this UNC gov­ern­ment coali­tion. To­day af­ter years of con­dem­na­tion and scorn, not on­ly heaped up­on the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in the projects by on the very ideas them­selves, this shame­less gov­ern­ment, af­ter hu­mil­i­at­ing and fir­ing peo­ple, shut­ting down here, there and every­where, de­lay­ing, bad-mouthing every­thing, now in the 2015 bud­get, have em­braced and is now pre­sent­ing as "new" con­cepts and pro­grammes, the very things which they stalled and de­layed.

They now thump the desks for the Diego Mar­tin high­way which they stopped in 2010 and restart­ed on­ly af­ter the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin North East was thrown out of Par­lia­ment for ag­i­tat­ing for the restart. Care­nage Fish Mar­ket is now to be their ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment af­ter four years of spite­ful ne­glect as a con­struc­tion project. Af­ter four years the aban­doned par­tial­ly con­struct­ed Bagatelle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and the Diego Mar­tin Sports Com­plex do not war­rant a men­tion. To­day we are told that the aban­doned mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar Tarou­ba Sta­di­um can­not be used for crick­et be­cause the soil is bad and Calder Hart built it.

In this bud­get of shame they say "we have no shame". All that has hap­pened at the end of their tenure, is that we as a peo­ple have had our de­vel­op­ment de­railed and valu­able time has been lost in the process. In our de­vel­op­men­tal his­to­ry 2010-2015, this pe­ri­od will long be known as "the miss­ing years".

Af­ter promis­ing to bring new ideas and so­lu­tions to our prob­lems and pro­duc­ing noth­ing but stum­bling, bum­bling dis­as­ters as al­ter­na­tives, this Gov­ern­ment which de­lib­er­ate­ly re­fused to build on the foun­da­tions now turn to some well-known el­e­ments of Vi­sion 2020 for sal­va­tion. Per­mit me to quote for you Mr Speak­er from the bud­get state­ment of 2005 and I want you to lis­ten very care­ful­ly:

"We are al­so tar­get­ing a num­ber of spe­cif­ic ar­eas for fur­ther com­mer­cial ex­pan­sion in­clud­ing:

Fish and fish pro­cess­ing;

Mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment;

The Film In­dus­try;

Print­ing and Pack­ag­ing; and

Food and bev­er­age."

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Patrick Man­ning PNM 2005

Nine years lat­er, lis­ten to this Mr Speak­er, "The Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to pro­vide in­cen­tives to de­vel­op the fol­low­ing "new" sec­tors which we are tar­get­ing

First­ly, food and bev­er­age in­dus­try

The cre­ative arts and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar film, fash­ion and the mu­sic in­dus­try

Third­ly, the mar­itime sec­tor

Fi­nal­ly, the yacht­ing in­dus­try

The Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to strength­en this in­dus­try by in­tro­duc­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) ad­vance train­ing for yacht build­ing and main­te­nance."

Pro­fes­sor An­drew Ram­roop of Sav­ile Row Lon­don was slan­dered and dri­ven away from UTT for want­i­ng to im­part his in­ter­na­tion­al im­age and knowl­edge to the fash­ion pro­gram there. Four years lat­er to­day we recog­nise fash­ion for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Af­ter $350 bil­lion dol­lars and no new ideas of their own they shame­less­ly re­sort to pla­gia­ris­ing that which they de­spised and at­tempt­ed to de­stroy. In this town with­out pity this is the bud­get with­out shame.

We on this side con­sid­er the doc­u­ment pre­sent­ed here last Mon­day to be noth­ing more than an ex­ten­sive spend­ing list. It was a tes­ti­mo­ny to gross neg­li­gence in the man­age­ment of the coun­try's eco­nom­ic af­fairs that has been the hall­mark of the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion. Mr Speak­er, the pro­posed bud­get is an elec­tion gim­mick con­struct­ed and pre­sent­ed in the hope that the gov­ern­ment could give as much as pos­si­ble in the ex­pec­ta­tion that this would wipe­out the un­pleas­ant mem­o­ries that we have been liv­ing through for the last four years. The Gov­ern­ment places its fu­ture on the mis­guid­ed be­lief that the peo­ple of T&T are not in­tel­li­gent and re­spon­si­ble.

If bud­gets of $35 and $40 bil­lion un­der the PNM were con­demned as "squan­der ma­nia",then what can we say about an al­most $65 bil­lion bud­get? At least dur­ing that pe­ri­od of ex­pen­di­ture we could have seen what was be­ing done even when we didn't agree with the pri­or­i­ties. To­day not even the Govenor of the Cen­tral Bank could say where the mon­ey is go­ing.

We ex­pect­ed the gov­ern­ment to come with an elec­tion bud­get and they did not dis­ap­point. We ex­pect­ed them to go in­to over­drive on ex­pen­di­ture and they sure­ly sur­passed that!! Fur­ther­more, we ex­pect­ed them to be short on rev­enue ideas and again they lived up to all of our very low ex­pec­ta­tions of them!

Mr Speak­er, what was pre­sent­ed on Mon­day can best be de­scribed as the most ir­re­spon­si­ble, reck­less and dan­ger­ous ap­proach to fis­cal man­age­ment that this coun­try has ever seen.

What is even more fright­en­ing is that they are proud of this!!!!

Mr Speak­er, we need to set the record straight, we have had enough of their out­right dis­hon­esty about PNM gov­er­nance of this coun­try!

Let me be­gin on this note on which they are work­ing hard to re-write the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In the six years when en­er­gy prices were above the bud­get­ed price, from 2003 to 2008, the PNM's track record is far su­pe­ri­or to any­thing they can dream of. Our man­age­ment of the coun­try's fis­cal af­fairs was rea­son­able and re­spon­si­ble. Let me read in­to the Hansard record the fol­low­ing:

Year Rev­enue Ex­pen­di­ture Bud­get Sur­plus Oil Price Eco­nom­ic growth

So ac­cu­mu­lat­ed bud­get sur­plus for the 6-year pe­ri­od is$29.3 bil­lion

This rep­re­sent­ed very im­por­tant ad­di­tions to na­tion­al sav­ings!This is what fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is all about. In fact Mr Speak­er, this huge na­tion­al sav­ing was in­stru­men­tal in al­low­ing them to be on the mas­sive spend­ing spree that they have been on dur­ing their en­tire term in of­fice!

Mr. Speak­er, we all know what hap­pened in 2008 to 2009, the fi­nan­cial cri­sis hit and the world econ­o­my went in­to a se­ri­ous re­ces­sion. We were not im­mune to it how­ev­er be­cause of our strong fun­da­men­tals we were able to weath­er the storm and bounce back very quick­ly. The re­al tragedy was that this pe­ri­od co­in­cid­ed with a change of Gov­ern­ment where un­pre­pared­ness was their main dis­tinc­tion.

Oil prices dropped from an av­er­age of $100 to about $60 over that pe­ri­od in 2009.

This re­sult­ed in an al­most cat­a­stroph­ic fall in Gov­ern­ment rev­enue from about $56 bil­lion to $39 bil­lion in 2009, a de­cline of $17 bil­lion in one year! So it is hard­ly sur­pris­ing that T&T, like most of the world, ran a deficit in that year.

As a re­sult, in fis­cal 2009 the deficitof $6.7 bil­lion was about fiveper cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct. This was af­ter six­con­sec­u­tive years of ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sur­plus­es of over $29 bil­lion!

A bud­get state­ment is a one-year spend­ing plan, so no Gov­ern­ment "in­her­its" a deficit in the true sense of the word. De­lib­er­ate­ly de­cid­ing to run a fis­cal deficit is pure­ly up to the Gov­ern­ment of the day, it has noth­ing to do with what hap­pened un­der any pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment, it is their pol­i­cy de­ci­sion to do or not do it!

What suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­ments "in­her­it" is na­tion­al debt!!! The Gov­ern­ment seems to be con­fused about the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two things! Hence they are try­ing to play us for fool, once again, while em­bar­rass­ing them­selves par­rot­ing eco­nom­ic gib­ber­ish!

As I not­ed above Mr Speak­er, what they ac­tu­al­ly in­her­it­ed was a fair amountof na­tion­al sav­ings built up by the PNM over sixyears of bud­get sur­plus­es!

This in­clud­ed over $9 bil­lion in for­eign ex­change re­serves at the Cen­tral Bank. And this mot­ley crew has the au­dac­i­ty to still be talk­ing about meet­ing an emp­ty trea­sury when they came in­to of­fice and they keep re­fer­ring to the lev­els of sav­ings as though it grew un­der their stew­ard­ship! How dis­hon­est can that be?

Fur­ther­more, in or­der to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty, it is a fact that we did use up some of the sav­ings to run a deficit in 2009. How­ev­er, things were be­gin­ning to turn around in 2010, that is up un­til May, when they were un­leashed on the pop­u­la­tion. That is when they promised to turn the econ­o­my around and they de­liv­ered by re­vers­ing a mod­er­ate re­cov­ery in­to a full blown re­ces­sion in the sec­ond half of the year.

At the end of fis­cal year 2010, the bud­get deficit came in at less than one per­cent. In fact, it is record­ed as -.2 of a per­cent in the Cen­tral Bank re­ports! Al­most close to a bal­anced bud­get!

So to boast about bring­ing down the bud­get deficit from 5 per­cent to 2.3 per cent can on­ly mean one thing: the Min­is­ter is con­fused and doesn't know what he is talk­ing about, but that is no sur­prise to us on this side!

Mr Speak­er, who is ad­vis­ing these peo­ple?

Now let us ex­am­ine their record of the past fouryears and see what they have of­fered the coun­try. In the five­bud­gets they pre­sent­ed this is what their record is:

Year Ex­pen­di­ture Rev­enue Bud­get Deficit Oil Price Eco­nom­ic growth

Mr Speak­er, their com­bined to­tal deficits over 5 years would have been a mind-bog­gling $33.4 bil­lion dol­lars!!! In oth­er words they would have added this amount to the na­tion­al debt!

This is what will be in­her­it­ed by the next gov­ern­ment, not whether you ran a deficit in one year or not.

Thank­ful­ly, due to their gen­er­al in­com­pe­tence and their in­abil­i­ty to im­ple­ment projects the ac­tu­al re­port­ed deficits have been low­er than what they set out to do!

So their plan is to spend al­most $290 bil­lion, gen­er­ate very lit­tle or no eco­nom­ic growth dur­ing their term in of­fice and with­out ever adding a sin­gle cent to Na­tion­al Sav­ings!

Mr Speak­er if this is not the height of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and mis­man­age­ment of our coun­try's fi­nance then what else can it be?

Mr Speak­er, I am sure some mis­guid­ed mem­ber from the oth­er side will jump up and say "but we added mon­ey to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion"' Fund". Well, on that note the IMF re­port­ed to us!!

In last year's Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion Re­port, which the Min­is­ter au­tho­rised for re­lease on­ly af­ter the bud­get de­bate in the Low­er House the IMF ad­dressed this is­sue and con­clud­ed that there is need for a medi­um term pol­i­cy which would al­low the HSF to be fund­ed on­ly when there is a fis­cal sur­plus. The event of fund­ing the HSF while run­ning fis­cal deficits, is in ef­fect bor­row­ing to save.

Ma­nip­u­la­tion of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund Re­quire­ment

De­spite the fact that oil prices have been high­er than es­ti­mat­ed in 2014, and the rev­enues from pe­tro­le­um are there­fore high­er than ex­pect­ed, the Gov­ern­ment has not de­posit­ed a sin­gle cent in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund for 2014.

In fact, be­cause of el­e­vat­ed oil prices, the rev­enue from oil should be at least 25% above the orig­i­nal es­ti­mates. On the face of it, this ap­pears to be a fla­grant breach, by the Gov­ern­ment, of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund Act, which clear­ly states that if the rev­enues col­lect­ed from pe­tro­le­um ex­ceed the es­ti­mates by 10%, the sur­plus must be de­posit­ed in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

How­ev­er, in an­oth­er sleight of hand and act of de­cep­tion, the Gov­ern­ment has avoid­ed de­posit­ing mon­ey in­to the Fund by sim­ply not col­lect­ing tax­es from oil com­pa­nies, in par­tic­u­lar Petrotrin. And so, where­as Petrotrin is li­able to pay tax­es on its in­come from oil on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis, like every­body else, the Min­is­ter has al­lowed Petrotrin to break our in­come tax laws and not pay its tax­es in 2014, there­by sup­press­ing the ac­tu­al col­lec­tion of rev­enues from pe­tro­le­um and breach­ing the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund Act.

He has in fact cheat­ed the Fund and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of mon­ey that should have been de­posit­ed in­to the Fund, and thus fa­cil­i­tat­ed the mis­man­age­ment, mis­use of funds and dis­re­gard for pro­ce­dure that is now ram­pant at Petrotrin un­der this Gov­ern­ment.

They are nei­ther fool­ing the IMF nor are they fool­ing us! So Mr Speak­er, they run bud­get deficits then bor­row mon­ey to put in the HSF to com­ply with the law and pro­ceed to beat their chest and boast about adding so much to our fund!

Sleight of Hand with the Rev­enue Fig­ures for 2014

The orig­i­nal es­ti­mate of rev­enue for 2014 was $53.6 bil­lion. How­ev­er, the ac­tu­al rev­enue to be col­lect­ed in 2014 has been re­vised to $58.4 bil­lion, an in­crease of $4.8 bil­lion.

On the face of it, with­out drilling deep­er in­to the fig­ures, this sounds quite good, and gives the im­pres­sion that the econ­o­my is in­deed per­form­ing well.

How­ev­er, a clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion will re­veal the sleight of the hand that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has en­gaged in, since most of the ad­di­tion­al rev­enue in 2014 has come from non-tax in­come, i.e. from what is re­ferred to as "prop­er­ty in­come". In par­tic­u­lar, the "prof­its" from non-fi­nan­cial en­ter­pris­es in 2014 has ex­ceed­ed the bud­get es­ti­mates by $4.5 bil­lion.

Again, this sounds good if you are not fa­mil­iar with the ter­mi­nol­o­gy, but the re­al­i­ty is that this ad­di­tion­al rev­enue was not re­al­ly "earned" in 2014 at all. In­stead, what the gov­ern­ment has done is to ap­pro­pri­ate $6 bil­lion from the cash re­serves of State En­ter­pris­es such as the Na­tion­al Gas Cor­po­ra­tion. These are re­serves that have been built up over the years, and in­stead of ear­mark­ing and us­ing these cash re­serves for their in­tend­ed pur­pos­es, such as de­vel­op­ment of our en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­pan­sion of the econ­o­my through pru­dent in­vest­ments, the Gov­ern­ment has forced these com­pa­nies to pay huge div­i­dends in 2014 to cov­er its re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and to pre­tend that the econ­o­my is grow­ing.

This is in ef­fect, a fraud on the pop­u­la­tion, be­cause the gov­ern­ment re­al­ly did not ex­ceed its rev­enue pro­jec­tions in 2014. In­stead, it just pulled cash re­serves or sav­ings out of the state en­ter­pris­es; mon­ey that had been built up over many, many years, in a de­ceit­ful at­tempt to cov­er its wan­ton, waste­ful and prof­li­gate ex­pen­di­ture pat­terns. An ex­am­i­na­tion of the fig­ures al­so re­veals that it in­tends to per­pe­trate this same sleight of hand again in 2015, by pulling an­oth­er $5 bil­lion out of the cash re­serves or sav­ings of the State En­ter­pris­es, and pre­tend­ing that this is rev­enue "earned". This ap­proach of course is un­sus­tain­able, be­cause by the time they lose the next elec­tion, they would have sucked the state en­ter­pris­es dry.

What this means is that if this is al­lowed to hap­pen these com­pa­nies would be look­ing to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for mon­ey for their own nec­es­sary in­vest­ments and they would not be in­stru­ments of eco­nom­ics ex­pan­sion as an­tic­i­pat­ed when they built up their own re­serves. Their plan is that by the time the full ef­fects of this fol­ly is ful­ly ex­posed they would have been long gone.

Tax Amnesty and Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty

Mr Speak­er, their fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty does not end there. They have now opt­ed for a sec­ond tax amnesty in three years!Fre­quent tax amnesties are of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with coun­tries that are in eco­nom­ic tur­moil, it is not a re­flec­tion of pru­dent man­age­ment.

Nev­er­the­less, it is clear­ly an­oth­er fee­ble ef­fort to raise mon­ey for the Gov­ern­ment. This may be all part of their plan, along with the ex­pect­ed $1.5 bil­lion from Phoenix Park IPO, so that they can go run­ning around boast­ing about bring­ing down the bud­get deficit as a per­cent­age of GDP.Again, who are they fool­ing?

Mr Speak­er, all they are do­ing is de­grad­ing the rev­enue col­lec­tion ef­fort of the coun­try. In­stead of ad­mit­ting that the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty pro­posed by the PNM was the cor­rect way to go, they rather en­gage in un­sus­tain­able gim­mick­ry.

We are com­mit­ting here to­day that un­der the next PNM gov­ern­ment the es­tab­lish­ment of a func­tion­ing rev­enue au­thor­i­ty is a high pri­or­i­ty in our coun­try's in­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

This gov­ern­ment's pen­chant for cov­er­ing up wrong do­ing knows no bounds. We had an IPO at FCB and the pub­lic re­spond­ed with the ex­pect­ed en­thu­si­asm. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the process has been mired in ma­jor in­sid­er trad­ing scan­dals in­vov­ing el­e­ments of the man­age­ment and the board of FCB. Dur­ing this scan­dal the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance ap­point­ed an act­ing chair­man of the board who now has se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer to the au­thor­i­ties.

What does the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance mean when he said:"De­spite the con­cern­sex­pressed by the Na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty with re­spect to the in­or­di­nate pur­chase amount by one staff mem­ber of First Cit­i­zens which is now the sub­ject to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion"?

Is the Min­is­ter con­firm­ing that all the is­sues sur­round­ing the act­ing chair­man and oth­ers con­nect­ed in the IPO scan­dal are now com­plete­ly buried? Did this Min­is­ter not give the pub­lic the as­sur­ance that the en­tire in­sid­er trad­ing scan­dal was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed? Why then is the Min­is­ter con­tin­u­ing to try to hood­wink the pub­lic that it was on­ly one per­son, Mr Ra­haman, who has ques­tions to an­swer with re­spect to FCB IPO in­sid­er trad­ing scan­dal? This Min­is­ter came to this job and in the eyes of many, bring­ing an im­age of trust and in­tegri­ty. If this is any­thing to go by we might as well place our gaze else­where.

Chal­lenges to sus­tain­able growth:

The goven­r­ment need­ed to ad­just its ex­pan­sion­ary fis­cal pol­i­cy stance to one of con­sol­i­da­tion. It need­ed to take the pop­u­la­tion on board, in­form­ing them of our heavy re­liance on the ex­ter­nal en­er­gy sec­tor which faces ex­po­sure to de­clin­ing en­er­gy prices over the medi­um term in the face of the Shale Gas sit­u­a­tion and oth­er clouds which could rain on our pa­rade with dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the qual­i­ty of life that we have come to know.

Non En­er­gy ex­ports are on the de­cline in the face of shrink­ing pur­chas­ing pow­er of re­gion­al mar­kets, our largest trad­ing part­ners. They choose in­stead ad hoc pol­i­cy mea­sures in­stead of com­pre­hen­sive pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions ob­tained by ref­er­ence to any plan of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

What we are wit­ness­ing is a base­line sce­nario which shows grow­ing over­all im­bal­ance and a de­te­ri­o­rat­ing fis­cal po­si­tion with in­creas­ing risk of un­sus­tain­able debt ac­cu­mu­la­tion.

For as long as we are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy sec­tor the econ­o­my would be put at risk if, for any rea­son, rev­enues from that sec­tor de­clines. The re­sults of the Ry­der Scott re­port shows a con­tin­ued de­cline in re­serves.

The re­cent in­cen­tive pro­gramme in­sti­tut­ed to en­cour­age ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, while nec­es­sary, fur­ther erodes rev­enues from the sec­tor the ef­fects of which are im­me­di­ate­ly felt. The ben­e­fits from any suc­cess­ful drilling will on­ly be ex­pe­ri­enced 5-8yrs from dis­cov­ery.

There is no stat­ed plan to mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive ef­fects which ex­ac­er­bate the risks to the econ­o­my.

This Gov­ern­ment promised to out­line a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan for the econ­o­my to sup­port the eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion re­quired for sus­tain­able growth. Sev­er­al min­is­ters pa­rad­ed but there is no dis­cernible plan.

Whilst leg­isla­tive re­forms in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor are mov­ing apace, the abil­i­ty to en­sure com­pli­ance is sore­ly lack­ing with the lev­el of in­ef­fi­cien­cy pre­vail­ing in a col­laps­ing and de­mor­alised Pub­lic Sec­tor.

The in­abil­i­ty of the CSO to pro­vide qual­i­ty and time­ly sta­tis­tics se­vere­ly ham­pers the mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance of the econ­o­my but more im­por­tant­ly it does not in­stil con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to ef­fect mean­ing­ful pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion.

The IMF Ar­ti­cle IV re­port which the Min­is­ter has been care­ful­ly silent about al­so points to the pur­suit by the Gov­ern­ment of ex­pan­sion­ary fis­cal pol­i­cy which puts a cer­tain amount of pres­sure on the Cen­tral Bank's abil­i­ty to pur­sue ef­fec­tive Mon­e­tary pol­i­cy in its ef­fort to con­trol the high lev­els of liq­uid­i­ty in the sys­tem.

Whilst pri­vate sec­tor cred­it has be­gun to grow af­ter years of stag­na­tion, the trend is for use in con­sumer durables such as mo­tor ve­hi­cles and mort­gages and not nec­es­sar­i­ly in in­vest­ment in pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ty.

The lev­el of trans­fers and sub­si­dies has be­come un­sus­tain­able with very lit­tle at­tempt to con­trol its growth. Just look at WASA/wa­ter re­sources and see the scan­dalous award of con­tracts for huge sums with lit­tle to show for it. First it was "Wa­ter for all by 2000" now it is 24/7 Wa­ter for all by Christ­mas.

Last year the big item was the gov­ern­ment's at­tempt to con­trol the gas sub­sidy by rais­ing the price of pre­mi­um gaso­line. We were told that this vaps would push dri­vers to the cheap­er fu­el there­by re­duc­ing the sub­sidy. One year lat­er not a word from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance as to the out­come of this pol­i­cy. All we have heard about is that Petrotrin is in the in­vid­i­ous po­si­tion of hav­ing to bor­row to main­tain its op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­ture. The gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to elim­i­nate ex­ist­ing sub­sidy ar­rears by the end of the fis­cal year but has not in­di­cat­ed whether this would be done by di­rect bor­row­ing, sup­press­ing planned ex­pen­di­ture or run­ning larg­er deficits than pro­grammed. The oth­er op­tion here would be to re­quest larg­er div­i­dends from prof­itable state en­ter­pris­es viz, NGC, NL­CB etc., a prac­tice that is con­sis­tent­ly be­ing em­ployed, but is not sus­tain­able.

Non-en­er­gy rev­enue has con­tin­ued to un­der­per­form, par­tic­u­lar­ly non-tax rev­enue and there has been an ar­rears build up in VAT which the gov­ern­ment has in­di­cate it in­tends to liq­ui­date by the end of the fis­cal year. The fail­ure by the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment some form of prop­er­ty tax, even af­ter in­di­cat­ing it would do so in the last Bud­get con­tin­ues to be of some con­cern that this gov­ern­ment gov­erns for its own polti­cal well-be­ing and not for the na­tion­al in­ter­est in the mean­time mil­lions of dol­lars are al­lowed to flow down the drain. Fur­ther there has been no dis­cus­sion of any new rev­enue rais­ing mea­sures to off­set the in­creas­ing ex­pen­di­ture over the medi­um term.

The com­mit­ment to a bal­anced Bud­get by 2016 is still be­ing tout­ed but there does not ap­pear to be any planned ac­tiv­i­ty to do so. To put this in con­text, the present bud­get out­turn is ex­pect­ed to see a deficit of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.5-2.0 per cent of GDP there­fore there would have to be at least a fiveper cent in­crease in rev­enue to ac­com­mo­date the grow­ing trend in ex­pen­di­ture or a cut in ex­pen­di­ture by a sim­i­lar amount. The gov­ern­ment does not say what are its ex­pec­ta­tions in this re­gard.

The un­der­per­for­mance of the Cap­i­tal Pro­gramme is an­oth­er area of con­cern since it re­duces the lev­el of gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment which is nec­es­sary to pro­vide the plat­form for eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment.

Dur­ing the last three re­spons­es to the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion made by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, I made the point that the en­er­gy sec­tor, by far the most im­por­tant eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of the coun­try, con­tribut­ing 42 per centof our GDP was fac­ing a loom­ing cri­sis–a cri­sis that was wors­en­ing. So far our pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion have been masked by con­sis­tent high oil prices and good gas prices for er­rant car­goes.

At that time, I plead­ed that the Gov­ern­ment di­rect sub­stan­tial ef­forts to­wards avert­ing that cri­sis.

The Gov­ern­ment's re­sponse has been the Prime Min­is­ter's an­nounce­ment, about two years ago that "God is aTri­ni," whilst dis­play­ing a bot­tle of crude oil from the so called "new find" of light sweet crude from the "Ju­bilee field" which they said lie in shal­low for­ma­tions and should be in full pro­duc­tion by as ear­ly as Oc­to­ber 2012. This they held up as the an­swer to our de­clin­ing oil pro­duc­tion which has flat­tened out at 80,000 bar­rels per day, down from 100,000 in 2010.

Of course, no "Ju­bilee oil boom" has been heard of since. We have had sev­er­al ex­pen­sive oil spills in­stead.

We al­so had the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs pre­dict­ing that in fiveyears, pre­sum­ably based on his ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor, sub­stan­tial oil and gas will be flow­ing. The cur­rent re­al­i­ty is that the long await­ed BP Ju­niper field to the res­cue will not come on stream un­til 2017. Oth­er an­tic­i­pat­ed new gas from BG will come on soon­er but will on­ly be keep­ing ex­ist­ing sup­plies sta­ble.

What all of this mean is, con­trary to what we have been led to be­lieve, the gas sup­ply would re­main a ma­jor is­sue at AL­NG and at Pt Lisas for some time to come. In typ­i­cal UNC style they will tell you that it is PNM who didn't do this and the PNM who didn't do that but they will take no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for not con­clud­ing cru­cial dis­cus­sions about "cush­ion gas" or oth­er arrange­ments to pro­tect the load de­mands of the ex­ist­ing users at AL­NG and Pt Lisas.

Many of our down­stream plants are reg­u­lar­ly op­er­at­ing in fits and starts well be­low ca­pac­i­ty to the detri­ment of prof­its and equip­ment.

What is worse is that many of our ma­jor gas sup­ply con­tracts are com­ing up for re­new­al in or around 2018 with the ma­jor is­sue of gas pric­ing not be­ing ad­dressed by the gov­ern­ment. Ap­par­ent­ly this gov­ern­ment is wait­ing un­til we get to the edge of the precipice be­fore we deal with this is­sue when we have vir­tu­al­ly no ne­go­ti­at­ing room with the up­stream­ers who are re­quired to keep our in­dus­tries in Pt Lisas in busi­ness.

This en­vi­ron­ment of gas short­age cou­pled with pend­ing gas pric­ing is­sues be­ing ig­nored make very neg­a­tive con­ver­sa­tions in in­vestor board­rooms abroad.

We have read re­cent­ly that the Ry­der Scott re­port has in­di­cat­ed that the gas re­serves of the coun­try have dropped by an­oth­er 17%.

This is the cli­mate in which we must re­view our com­pet­i­tive­ness and our re­sponse to chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with hy­dro­car­bons as the main­stay of our econ­o­my.

The Gov­ern­ment knows about the role of rev­enue gen­er­a­tors in the en­er­gy in­dus­try and that is why they re­peat­ed­ly an­nounced nu­mer­ous in­ten­tions to grow the in­vest­ment in down­stream op­er­a­tions but like every­thing else they talked a lot, praise them­selves lav­ish­ly but de­liv­ered ab­solute­ly noth­ing. No AUM II, no SABIC, no CARISAL, no noth­ing!

In an en­vi­ron­ment of gas sup­ply is­sues and gas pric­ing chal­lenges they were an­nounc­ing projects one af­ter the oth­er. Not one has ma­te­ri­al­ized. In this bud­get they ap­pear to have giv­en up. We are left with one hope­ful project, the Mit­subishi plant, and two big ques­tions. Where is the gas? What is the gas price for the project?

Coun­try's His­tor­i­cal De­vel­op­ment

The coun­try needs to com­pare this sit­u­a­tion with the de­vel­op­ment that took place in the late '70s and for the decades 1980 to 2000, when Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the PNM was able to es­tab­lish it­self as a lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al play­er in the gas in­ten­sive in­dus­tries.

"The Trinidad mod­el", as it is some­times called, was great­ly ad­mired par­tic­u­lar­ly by gas rich de­vel­op­ing coun­tries which wit­nessed the growth of an in­ter­na­tion­al gas in­dus­try in a very small coun­try with lim­it­ed gas re­serves of less than 1% of the to­tal world gas re­serves. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od (lat­er 70s and decades 1980-2000), the coun­try moved from a pro­duc­tion util­i­sa­tion of 150 mil­lion cu­bic feet of gas per day in 1978 to a cur­rent lev­el of over four bil­lion cu­bic feet of gas per day.

Al­so dur­ing this pe­ri­od, with the es­tab­lish­ment of one iron and steel com­plex, nine fer­tilis­er plants and sev­en methanol plants, the coun­try has ex­port­ed 18.6 mil­lion tons of am­mo­nia, 2.4 mil­lion tons of urea and 23 mil­lion tons of methanol in the last four years alone.

Since 1999, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 147 mil­lion tons of LNG have been ex­port­ed and over 100,000 tons of melamine from the AUM1 plant com­mis­sioned in 2010.

A re­mark­able sto­ry by all stan­dards of com­par­i­son and eval­u­a­tion, from a coun­try dom­i­nat­ed by oil pro­duc­tion and re­fin­ing of oil.

One ma­jor in­gre­di­ent which made all this pos­si­ble was cer­tain­ty and con­fi­dence in a good in­vest­ment cli­mate. That sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing and the Gov­ern­ment is obliv­i­ous to the dis­as­trous con­se­quences if things don't get bet­ter soon.T&T's econ­o­my is now dri­ven by nat­ur­al gas ac­count­ing for 44% of GDP.

Ero­sion of Coun­try's Suc­cess

How­ev­er, notwith­stand­ing those suc­cess­es, the coun­try is now wit­ness­ing a set of cir­cum­stances that have be­gun to erode Trinidad and To­ba­go's po­si­tion as a leader in the gas in­ten­sive in­dus­tries. The con­cern which I want to share with you is that the ero­sion is hap­pen­ing more quick­ly than an­tic­i­pat­ed.

As we re­view the past fouryears, we are con­front­ed with the fol­low­ing facts:

Gas pro­duc­tion has dropped.

The pro­duc­tion of methanol, fer­tilis­ers and steel has al­so dropped.

Since the com­mis­sion­ing in 2011 of AUM1, which con­struc­tion be­gan in 2008/2009, the coun­try has not been able to at­tract any new ma­jor projects that utilise gas.

The AUM2 project, which had been ap­proved and gas con­tracts fi­nal­ized, has not been re­al­ized and, with the po­ten­tial in­vestors in­volved in ar­bi­tra­tion with the gov­ern­ment, very like­ly will not be re­alised in the near fu­ture.

The ES­SAR spon­sored project, which in­volved an in­vest­ment in the iron and steel in­dus­try of over US$1.5 bil­lion, was can­celled.

There was the dis­pute over Agree­ments with the Ger­man Con­sor­tium and the Ger­man De­vel­op­ment Bank which led to pro­tract­ed on­go­ing ar­bi­tra­tion over the past three years the Gov­ern­ment was ac­cused of op­pres­sion over a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er and lost the case now we have been forced to sell CLI­CO methanol shares un­der the guid­ing hand of an ar­bi­tra­tor. This mat­ter was con­clud­ed yes­ter­day. I'd like the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to tell us what is the val­u­a­tion the Gov­ern­ment had put on the MHTL shares as of bud­get day. While the Gov­ern­ment is sali­vat­ing over the in­com­ing wind­fall from the sale, this plus the can­cel­la­tion of high pro­file con­tracts such as the OPVs and the Alu­minum Smelter and Alutrint could on­ly have tar­nished the coun­try's im­age as an in­vest­ment lo­ca­tion.

Com­mit­ted in­vestors to the cre­ation of an alu­minum in­dus­try, in­clud­ing the down­stream pro­duc­tion of high val­ued prod­ucts, have been pre­vent­ed from mak­ing these in­vest­ments as the Gov­ern­ment took a po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion, pri­or to any Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion on the mat­ter, to aban­don the project. The af­ter­math of this has led to:

Two on­go­ing ar­bi­tra­tions be­tween these in­vestors and the Gov­ern­ment where we are fac­ing claims of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.

A re­jec­tion by the Gov­ern­ment of US$400 mil­lion on con­ces­sion­ary loan terms, to­wards fi­nanc­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the alu­minum in­dus­try.

The loss of at­tract­ing in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, the largest pri­vate in­dus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate of Brazil.

A pow­er plant whose ma­jor load has dis­ap­peared caus­ing a sig­nif­i­cant pay­ment by T&TEC with­out hav­ing the full ben­e­fit of the pow­er plant.

The ef­fec­tive aban­don­ment of the Union Es­tate at La Brea.

In all of this we lost good jobs and we lost sig­nif­i­cant earn­ings.

To com­pound these in­ter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties, the coun­try is now faced with the rapid de­vel­op­ment of shale gas pro­duc­tion in the USA which brings a new chal­lenge to our gas in­dus­try.The re­serves of shale gas in the USA are now in ex­cess of our proven re­serves and the pro­ject­ed num­ber for such re­serves could ex­ceed 600TCF.

Al­ready T&T has be­gun to ex­pe­ri­ence the neg­a­tive ef­fects. Our sale of LNG to the USA now stands at 11% of At­lantic LNG's pro­duc­tion com­pared to over 90% in ear­li­er years.

It is recog­nised that At­lantic LNG is seek­ing and has de­vel­oped new mar­kets but the com­pe­ti­tion from the USA will in­crease as that coun­try could be­come an ex­porter of LNG.

Com­pe­ti­tion is al­so ex­pect­ed from Nige­ria, Qatar, An­go­la and oth­er new en­tries in LNG pro­duc­tion.

As re­gards petro­chem­i­cals (am­mo­nia/urea, methanol) plants of sim­i­lar pro­duc­tion in the USA, at­tract­ed by the com­pet­i­tive price of shale gas, are be­ing restart­ed. For the first time in about 30 years, plants are be­ing ap­proved for con­struc­tion with­in the Unit­ed States.

Of greater sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing some with stakes in Trinidad and To­ba­go, are now ac­tive­ly plan­ning or build­ing new plants in the USA in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with our own plants here.

Over the past twen­ty (20) years, prompt­ed to some ex­tent by our suc­cess, out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go there has been an ex­ten­sive search for gas re­serves that has met with a great deal of suc­cess.

For ex­am­ple, in ad­di­tion to Nige­ria, there are at least six (6) coun­tries in West Africa and pos­si­bly four (4) coun­tries in East Africa that now have es­ti­mat­ed gas re­serves pos­si­bly, in ex­cess of the re­main­ing gas re­serves of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

A crit­i­cism can be that, as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, I am a prophet of doom but let me present you with some hard facts which I am cer­tain the hon­or­able Min­is­ter of En­er­gy will con­firm.

Over the past four (4) years, the drop in pro­duc­tion of

petro chem­i­cals at Point Lisas ex­ceed­ed 4 mil­lion stan­dard tons.

This loss in pro­duc­tion, trans­lates to $1.5 bil­lion USD in loss of

rev­enue to the coun­try.

In more spe­cif­ic terms, the NGC, through its loss of sales of

gas, would have ex­pe­ri­enced a drop of its rev­enue of over

And, most im­por­tant­ly the cor­po­ra­tion tax paid di­rect­ly to the Gov­ern­ment, dropped by al­most $300 mil­lion USD.

Un­der these cir­cum­stances and the re­cent Ry­der Scott Re­port that shows a drop in the gas re­serves the prob­lem is fur­ther com­pound­ed. Not on­ly will Trinidad be un­able to at­tract any new gas in­ten­sive in­dus­tries but, we face a dan­ger that some of the ex­ist­ing plants may be in jeop­ardy.

Is there a cri­sis? The PNM be­lieves there is.

The PNM has been ad­dress­ing so­lu­tions to the less­en­ing of this cri­sis and has de­vel­oped a pol­i­cy with ap­pro­pri­ate strate­gies that will lead to an im­prove­ment in this sit­u­a­tion, which is cur­rent­ly tak­ing on dis­qui­et­ing pro­por­tions. In the mean­time the Gov­ern­ment takes its sweet time to de­vel­op a gas mas­ter plan for de­ci­sion-mak­ing in a changed en­vi­ron­ment. Pol­i­cy by vaps and Na­tion­al games and ba­by milk make great talk­ing points but pol­i­cy by vaps in En­er­gy "they go kill we"

PNM En­er­gy Pol­i­cy and Strat­e­gy

The PNM En­er­gy Pol­i­cy and Strat­e­gy will in­volve:

Re-es­tab­lish­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty and the im­age of our coun­try in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with spe­cial ef­fort fo­cused on such re­la­tion­ships in the USA, UK, Venezuela, Brazil, Ger­many, Chi­na, Sau­di Ara­bia, In­dia and the Caribbean coun­tries.

En­gage­ment with both cur­rent and po­ten­tial pro­duc­ers of our hy­dro­car­bon re­sources.

Treat­ing with the prob­lems that now face the com­pa­nies in­volved in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

Iden­ti­fy­ing the key roles to be as­signed to the en­er­gy state en­ter­pris­es, in­clud­ing Petrotrin and NGC, in meet­ing these chal­lenges and grasp­ing these op­por­tu­ni­ties. This in­cludes an im­me­di­ate and com­pre­hen­sive Tri­par­tite (Gov­ern­ment/ Petrotrin/ Labour) au­dit of Petrotrin from safe­ty to eco­nom­ics. It will al­so in­clude a re­view on the role of pos­si­ble re­struc­tur­ing of NGC/NEC in an an­tic­i­pa­tion of part­ner­ship in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties at home and abroad.

En­sur­ing that the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs is once again staffed with ex­pe­ri­enced and qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als.

Re­vis­it­ing the use of the Union Es­tate and the ma­rine fa­cil­i­ties at La Brea.

Prepar­ing de­vel­op­ment plans for both the South West and South East penin­su­las from which our oil and gas are pro­duced. This to in­clude an up­dat­ed re­view of the 2007 de­vel­op­ment plan, which ex­ists for the South­west penin­su­la.

Sup­port­ing both UWI and UTT, the ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing of per­son­nel to sup­port the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Re­view­ing the leg­is­la­tion that gov­erns the pe­tro­le­um sec­tor with the ob­jec­tive of en­cour­ag­ing the ex­pan­sion of that sec­tor of each el­e­ment of the val­ue chain and en­cour­age­ment of more lo­cal con­tent.

We take cred­it for the fact that Ju­niper plat­form can now be built at LABID­CO. We es­tab­lish LABID­CO and re­sus­ci­tat­ed it af­ter po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents had spite­ful­ly shut it down for five years.

Mr Speak­er this coun­try, na­tion­wide has a huge and grow­ing traf­fic prob­lem. In fact in some ar­eas the sit­u­a­tion has reached grid­lock. It is true of side roads, ar­ter­ies and it is true of the main cor­ri­dors. In the last bud­get de­bate I out­lined in de­tailed the PNM's ap­proach in treat­ing with this is­sue.

The ques­tion still re­mains, which date in which year can the pop­u­la­tion ex­pect this prob­lem to be solved? The prob­lem is get­ting worse with each ar­rival of the month­ly ship­ment of mo­tor ve­hi­cles. The Gov­ern­ment's so­lu­tion is pur­chase of 100 fly­ing bus­es. These will es­cape the traf­fic.

To­day I re­it­er­ate the PNM's po­si­tion. In 2015 we would im­me­di­ate­ly in­vite the IDB to pro­vide a tech­ni­cal re­views of this is­sue and re­port to us on the tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty and eco­nom­ics of a mass tran­sit sys­tem. Once the out­come of this re­view is pos­i­tive the PNM would build the rapid tran­sit sys­tem. We would en­gage the IDB for long term fund­ing and tie some as­pects of the re­pay­ment of this con­ces­sion­ary loan to the grad­ual and sus­tained re­duc­tion in the gas sub­sidy ex­pen­di­ture.

We view this even­tu­al es­tab­lish­ment of this piece of in­fra­struc­ture as a ma­jor eco­nom­ic dri­ver, which, over a five-sev­enyear pe­ri­od can change the face of the eco­nom­ic and so­cial jus­tice land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go and be­come a wel­come lega­cy to be­queath to the next gen­er­a­tion.

The con­tri­bu­tion of lo­cal con­tent like con­crete, steel, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, labour and fi­nance are just some of the pos­i­tives as­so­ci­at­ed with any con­struc­tion of this in­fra­struc­ture. The mil­lions of man hours lost in traf­fic and the loss of sleep by the su­per ear­ly ris­ers and the open­ing up of re­al es­tate away from the ex­pen­sive and cur­rent­ly crowd­ed com­mu­ni­ties are but a few of the over­all ben­e­fit of this in­vest­ment ini­tia­tives.

The PNM will do it as we have bold­ly done with the pur­chase of BP, SHELL and Tex­a­co: when we es­tab­lished AL­NG; when we float­ed the cur­ren­cy; when we built the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex and cre­at­ed FCB and the Unit Trust even as oth­ers thought dif­fer­ent­ly at the time. We in the PNM con­tin­ue to have bound­less faith in our des­tiny as a coun­try and as a peo­ple.

When the PNM in­tro­duced the GATE pro­gramme it was un­der­pinned by a pol­i­cy which said that the coun­try would in­vest in the max­i­mum de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man cap­i­tal of the na­tion in such a way that no gen­uine de­sire for young peo­ple's self-ad­vance­ment and will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate in the na­tion's econ­o­my should be frus­trat­ed be­cause of the in­di­vid­ual or fam­i­lies' in­abil­i­ty to pay the cost of the as­so­ci­at­ed tu­ition. The PNM reaf­firms that po­si­tion to­day so GATE re­mains a flag­ship lega­cy and a fea­tured for­ward-look­ing pol­i­cy.

How­ev­er, af­ter years of op­er­a­tion we are now cer­tain that there are some waste, in­ef­fi­cien­cies, sharp prac­tice and mis­di­rec­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­gramme. So as we com­mit to the con­tin­u­a­tion of the pro­gramme as a ma­jor part of the top of the ed­u­ca­tion ex­pen­di­ture the PNM would im­me­di­ate­ly con­duct a val­ue au­dit to sig­nif­i­cant­ly tight­en the op­er­a­tions to en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The monies spent must de­liv­er the stat­ed ob­jec­tives of keep­ing the door wide open to ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the needy, whilst pro­tect­ing the tax pay­er from un­nec­es­sary bur­dens im­posed by op­por­tunis­tic ex­trac­tions, du­pli­ca­tion and in­equity.

Com­men­su­rate with what we have ini­ti­at­ed at the top of the pyra­mid with re­spect to GATE and oth­er av­enues of ex­pen­di­ture and post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion which we now say must be sub­ject­ed to qual­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy re­views, the PNM now com­mits to an im­me­di­ate ma­jor shift in fo­cus to the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem. It is our view that many of the well-known ma­jor short­com­ings, which re­veal them­selves in the Sec­ondary School sys­tem, have their ori­gins in the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem. It there­fore fol­lows that if we are to get max­i­mum re­turns for the con­tin­u­ous large cap­i­tal out­lays, which are ex­pend­ed in the sec­ondary and post-sec­ondary lev­els, then the time has come for ma­jor tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tion at the pri­ma­ry foun­da­tion lev­el of the over­all struc­ture.

Ex­pe­ri­ence has been teach­ing us that the ex­is­tence of school hous­es and staff on the pay­roll do not by them­selves guar­an­tee teach­ing, learn­ing or the mould­ing of the re­spectable cit­i­zen. We al­so know that in many of our com­mu­ni­ties the so­cial stress­es of the homes and streets flow in­to the pri­ma­ry school class­rooms, of­ten times brand­ing young in­no­cents as fail­ures even be­fore they get their first chance.

This is where the state now needs to di­rect at­ten­tion and ad­di­tion­al hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources to pre­pare a new cur­ricu­lum to en­cour­age teach­ers and prin­ci­pals and to en­gage and in­sert the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties in­to the prepa­ra­tion and nur­tur­ing of their chil­dren. To this end the PNM would for­mal­ize and fund op­er­a­tional links be­tween the So­cial Ser­vices arm of the state with the lo­cal gov­ern­ment arm and the ed­u­ca­tion min­istry in com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil arrange­ments.

What we an­tic­i­pate would arise out of this ap­proach is ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ty in­volve­ment with spe­cif­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for child-rar­ing ac­com­pa­nied by ad­e­quate re­sources and set tar­gets de­ter­mined af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the ed­u­ca­tors and the lo­cal ben­e­fi­cia­ries whom they are com­mit­ted to serve.

We will in­tro­duce the wider man­age­ment con­cepts of school dis­tricts and ac­cel­er­ate the place­ments of school boards to rapid­ly in­volve lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty per­son­nel with time and ex­per­tise to get in­volved in this plan in which the Gov­ern­ment would lead the way in redi­rect­ing the peo­ple. This will cre­ate an era of hope rather than the de­spair and help­less­ness which now per­vades our so­ci­ety.

It is our view that we need to break the cy­cle of sup­ply and frus­tra­tion which feed the crim­i­nal com­po­nent with what some call a "lost gen­er­a­tion" who may in­creas­ing­ly see their por­tion as an em­brace by the gang leader, a fast dol­lar and a beau­ti­ful cas­ket in an ear­ly grave. We as a peo­ple can and must do bet­ter than that. We must in­ter­vene now with a sense of pur­pose and that sense of ur­gency in this "Op­er­a­tion Lifeboat" aimed at the pri­ma­ry schools for on­ward trans­mis­sion to the rest of the Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem.

Mr Speak­er per­mit me a com­ment on bud­get­ing and sport, a sub­ject very close to the heart of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. So much has been said be­fore, all bad, that the Min­is­ter was un­sur­pris­ing­ly silent on his role on this sub­ject. In 2007/2008 at a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10 mil­lion per year the PNM ini­ti­at­ed and main­tained a pro­gramme of sup­port for our promis­ing elite ath­letes in prepa­ra­tion for the 2008 Olympics and be­yond. The re­sults of this pro­gramme were that we soon saw an up­surge in our na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Olympics and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al events. In­stead of build­ing on this and the sis­ter path­way pro­gramme the gov­ern­ment chose to "shut down", starve and fight with sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties and bod­ies.

The gov­ern­ment al­so shift­ed fo­cus and in its search for the elu­sive crime plan, de­cid­ed to use sport as a crime-fight­ing tool. Noth­ing was in­her­ent­ly wrong with such an idea but what­ev­er was put in place this UNC ini­tia­tive soon be­came a crime in it­self–or­gan­ised crime. The re­al scan­dal was that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance through the Sport Com­pa­ny and the Min­istry of Sport se­cret­ly fund­ed Life­S­port to the tune of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400 mil­lion worth of bor­rowed mon­ey for or­gan­ised crime which is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing a large con­tin­gent of the po­lice ser­vice in one way or the oth­er.

Then he comes to the Par­lia­ment to re­port on bud­get­ing and spend­ing and says not a word about this ma­jor bud­getary dis­as­ter for which he as pay­mas­ter is per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly painful about this is that even as all this was go­ing on the re­al sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty has been se­vere­ly ham­pered by the in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty and ne­glect with re­spect to their as­pi­ra­tions, al­lo­ca­tions and dis­burse­ments.

I want to give the sport­ing bod­ies, our ath­letes, pa­trons and fans the as­sur­ance that from 2015, af­ter the next gen­er­al elec­tions, san­i­ty and de­cen­cy will re­turn to ad­dress our sport­ing po­ten­tial and their ap­pro­pri­ate well thought out ini­tia­tives will be fund­ed for max­i­mum de­vel­op­ment of our young peo­ple at all lev­els with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on ju­nior de­vel­op­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard com­pe­ti­tions. Pro­grammes by vaps such as the hasti­ly an­nounced Na­tion­al Games for Elec­tions will not be ad­vanced but in­stead bet­ter plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion to en­sure suc­cess will be the yard­stick by which all will be mea­sured.

LO­CAL GOV­ERN­MENT

There are three arms of the State:the ju­di­cia­ry, the ex­ec­u­tive and leg­is­la­ture. Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment are elect­ed to the leg­is­la­ture to rep­re­sent their con­stituents, make laws and to over­see the ex­ec­u­tive. If MPs find them­selves in the ex­ec­u­tive then they have a sep­a­rate ad­di­tion­al func­tion and they are an­swer­able to Par­lia­ment. When you pro­vide mon­ey to be spent di­rect­ly or on the say-soof MPs then the lines be­come blurred and ac­count­abil­i­ty be­comes the first ca­su­al­ty. An ad­di­tion­al lay­er of su­per­vi­sion is now re­quired or these funds can be spent in a poor­ly su­per­vised man­ner there­by open­ing the way for un­ac­cept­able and cor­rupt prac­tices of all kind. This is not on­ly my analy­sis but the find­ings of re­views in In­dia and oth­er places where they have had cause to ex­per­i­ment with this vari­ant. Do we need this in the face of our ex­ist­ing struc­ture of lo­cal gov­ern­ment?

The PNM Pol­i­cy on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form to come in­to force with­in the first year of a new ad­min­is­tra­tion be­gins with the ab­sorp­tion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly in­to the Min­istry of Fi­nance. That is, the abo­li­tion of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as the first part of a wider re­form process be­gin­ning with the re­duc­tion of the size of the Cab­i­net. The staff at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment will be as­signed to a di­vi­sion in the Min­istry of Fi­nance which would pro­vide and su­per­vise the al­lo­ca­tion of fi­nan­cial and train­ing re­sources to the 14 cor­po­ra­tions, bor­oughs and cities in Trinidad. Some of the tech­ni­cal staff and pro­fes­sion­als cur­rent­ly in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment could be used to beef-up the man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ty of lo­cal gov­ern­ment units as these bod­ies as­sume a greater role in the gov­er­nance struc­ture of the coun­try. The Min­istry of Fi­nance will al­so be re­quired to op­er­ate a Gen­er­al Ac­count­ing Of­fice (GAO) to ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor im­ple­men­ta­tion and au­dit com­pli­ance through lo­cal au­thor­i­ties for funds pro­vid­ed.

The ex­ec­u­tive bod­ies of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment will re­ceive greater au­ton­o­my cou­pled with in­creased re­spon­si­bil­i­ties which they must now dis­charge in a new par­a­digm shift of gov­er­nance in Trinidad.

SO­CIAL / COM­MU­NI­TY RE­FORM

The goal is for T&T to be­come a re­spon­si­ble, self-re­liant, and car­ing so­ci­ety.

We have al­ways known that the PP has no con­cep­tion of gov­ern­ment or gov­er­nance, no sense of our past as a so­ci­ety, nor any ca­pac­i­ty what­so­ev­er to ar­tic­u­late and/or an­tic­i­pate where it wants to take our so­ci­ety. The PNM is the on­ly par­ty in the liv­ing mem­o­ry of our coun­try that has of­fered a co­her­ent sense of where it wish­es to take our pop­u­la­tion, ar­tic­u­lat­ed in a ma­jor doc­u­ment called "Vi­sion 2020." It is some­thing we will re­turn to in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture. How­ev­er, we con­fi­dent­ly ex­pect that a re­vised and rein­vig­o­rat­ed Vi­sion 2030 will put us back along the path of pros­per­i­ty and progress be­gin­ning in the year 2015.

As we re­view our sit­u­a­tion as a na­tion, we are con­fi­dent that there are two things which no hon­est, ob­jec­tive per­son can dis­pute: First, no oth­er par­ty has ever laid out a com­pre­hen­sive roadmap as to where it wants to take our so­ci­ety with­in a well-de­fined pe­ri­od. Sec­ond, and I have said it pub­licly, no one in this coun­try can hon­est­ly say that every­thing he or she has achieved, has been achieved with­out the as­sis­tance of the pro­grams the PNM has im­ple­ment­ed over its fifty-nine years of its ex­is­tence and the forty-five years that we have gov­erned this so­ci­ety.

But PNM is not about yes­ter­day's news. PNM is about to­day's re­al­i­ty and to­mor­row's dreams. You ask, Where do we wish to take the so­ci­ety? In the first in­stance we can say that the PNM is not com­mit­ted to a "gimme-gimme" so­ci­ety and is not any "gim­mick-to-win-an-elec­tion" par­ty. The free for all that was man­i­fest­ed in the Bud­get speech that was pre­sent­ed on Mon­day demon­strates this in­her­ent ca­pac­i­ty of our col­leagues on the oth­er side to be on­ly con­cerned with the next elec­tion.

The PNM is about the main­te­nance of a re­spon­si­ble, self-re­liant, and car­ing so­ci­ety where every per­son can re­al­ize his or her des­tiny. There is a talk­ing point that the PP will cre­ate a ba­by fund" with $500 to help ex­pec­tant moth­ers in need. At first blush this vaps seems to be a gen­er­ous ges­ture, but as we ex­am­ine it more close­ly we dis­cov­er the deeply ret­ro­grade and ir­re­spon­si­ble so­cial en­gi­neer­ing that such a pro­gram gen­er­ates. The Prime Min­is­ter says: "We are look­ing at Oc­to­ber 1, once the bud­get process goes through. We will have to cre­ate the cri­te­ria. It is not for every sin­gle fam­i­ly, it is for those most in need. With­in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple we will cre­ate the cri­te­ria" (Sun­day Ex­press, Sep­tem­ber 7, 2014).

This is the lev­el of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty we hear from the oth­er side. With­in four sen­tences, two vaps, with dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions, re­peat them­selves: we will cre­ate a fund; we will es­tab­lish the cri­te­ria. Such a state­ment sug­gests that in mak­ing this an­nounce­ment–the PP did not think through the im­pli­ca­tions of its ideas. It is mere­ly some­thing they ex­pect to do with­out hav­ing any sense of how such a pro­pos­al can af­fect the peo­ple it pur­ports to serve. Such con­sid­er­a­tions are not im­por­tant to the PP. It's just give away, spend, thief and the dev­il take the hind­most.

We, in the PNM, sug­gest the dev­il is al­ways in the de­tails. It is the small as­pects in these projects and schemes, of­ten over­looked, which cause enor­mous prob­lems in the fu­ture. What at first ap­pears to be the epit­o­me of car­ing and benev­o­lence–a Ba­by Fund–turns out to be "false gen­eros­i­ty," a way of act­ing and think­ing that makes the poor poor­er and the dis­pos­sessed the ob­ject of help­less­ness and de­hu­man­iza­tion. Such false gen­eros­i­ty sim­ply leaves these un­for­tu­nate peo­plein a per­pet­u­al state of grov­el­ing, cry­ing out, as Oliv­er Twist did, "Please sir, can I have some more."

By be­ing self-re­liant, we en­cour­age peo­ple to have con­fi­dence in their own abil­i­ties, self-as­sur­ance in ex­er­cis­ing their own pow­er, and the courage to ac­cept the con­se­quences of their ac­tions.

To­day, how­ev­er, I want to ar­gue that we can on­ly move for­ward if all of our cit­i­zens take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves and get in­volved more deeply in the po­lit­i­cal process.

This is where we dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves from our col­leagues on the oth­er side of the floor. We be­lieve the time has come when we must in­volve all of our cit­i­zens in the process of gov­ern­ment even at the low­est rung of our democ­ra­cy. I re­fer to what we in the PNM call the gov­er­nance of our so­ci­ety from the vil­lage lev­el up, the start­ing point in the process of cre­at­ing a re­spon­si­ble, self-re­liant, and car­ing so­ci­ety. We see this as a sig­nif­i­cant shift in the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion and prac­tice of gov­er­nance as we tran­si­tion from what we have to­day to what we per­ceive as be­ing the de­sir­able con­di­tion of gov­er­nance for our so­ci­ety.

I would be the first to agree that in our mov­ing from colo­nial­ism to in­de­pen­dence we did not em­pow­er our com­mu­ni­ties and build on all of the so­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal they had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over the cen­turies. We had Friend­ly So­ci­eties, Dr. Er­ic Williams start­ed the "Bet­ter Vil­lage Pro­gram" and en­cour­aged Vil­lage Coun­cils to mo­bilise the var­i­ous tal­ents in their com­mu­ni­ties. It was suc­cess­ful to a large de­gree. To­day we must go far­ther to in­volve cit­i­zens in their own de­vel­op­ment through the cre­ation of struc­tures to un­der­gird such de­vel­op­ment, which is why we, in the PNM, of­fer our new thrust: the gov­er­nance of our so­ci­ety from the bot­tom up.

These struc­tures, the Vil­lage Coun­cil or Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cils, shall have the right to se­lect their own vil­lage of­fi­cials (the name does not mat­ter) and a guid­ing coun­cil to run and ad­min­is­ter these vil­lages. These coun­cils would es­tab­lish their bud­gets, de­cide their pri­or­i­ties, and de­ter­mine how best to meet the needs of their com­mu­ni­ties. They would elect their rep­re­sen­ta­tive pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, whose func­tion it would be to de­ter­mine the plans, poli­cies and ac­tiv­i­ties of these en­ti­ties.

These vil­lage or com­mu­ni­ty en­ti­ties would be clos­er to the peo­ple. They would act as the eyes and the ears of the vil­lage. They would ini­ti­ate cul­tur­al, so­cial, and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, mon­i­tor school boards, be in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, and con­duct any ac­tiv­i­ty that was meant to en­hance and im­prove the vil­lages. They would al­so be re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing their own af­fairs sub­ject to all the pro­to­cols and over­sight that ac­com­pa­ny such ac­tiv­i­ties.

The PNM does not be­lieve that the per­sons whom they elect to serve them should al­ways be in­sult­ing them with all kinds of gim­micks and giv­ing them a false sense of hope.

This is what the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance had to say on a lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny called Ca­roni Green.

"the re­cent­ly-cre­at­ed Ca­roni GREEN Lim­it­ed. The com­pa­ny has al­ready brought in­to agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion 360 acres of land uti­liz­ing in the main the 2-acre sized agri­cul­tur­al plots leased from the for­mer em­ploy­ees of Ca­roni. With more than 290 met­ric tonnes of pro­duce har­vest­ed with­in the last 6 months, Ca­roni GREEN has been con­tribut­ing sub­stan­tial­ly to do­mes­tic con­sump­tion of qual­i­ty fresh veg­eta­bles;

Mr. Speak­er, of all the peo­ple in this Par­lia­ment, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance best knows about the scan­dalous po­si­tion Ca­roni Green found it­self in, to the point that to­day that com­pa­ny is­sued let­ters of ter­mi­na­tion to the 18 em­ploy­ees, it has no land un­der cul­ti­va­tion, con­tract or oth­er­wise, and it has no agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion to speak about. Put sim­ply Mr. Speak­er, con­trary to what has been said by the Min­is­ter, Ca­roni Green went in­to the red very quick­ly and re­mains there to­day. And the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance knows that well.

In fact Mr. Speak­er, the trou­bles for Ca­roni Green start­ed with a de­ci­sion to cre­ate the lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny and place it un­der the con­trol of a for­mer se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of what re­mains of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed.

In Oc­to­ber 2013, that se­nior ex­ec­u­tive, had been at the cen­tre of a $12 mil­lion claim filed against his own em­ploy­er Ca­roni Ltd, of which his em­ploy­er had no knowl­edge. Were it not for the sus­pi­cion of a High Court judge Mr. Speak­er, that se­nior ex­ec­u­tive may have been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a de­fault judg­ment against the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try for $12 mil­lion.

And, Mr. Speak­er, in­stead of the board of di­rec­tors of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed dis­miss­ing act­ing CEO, as it in­tend­ed to, in Oc­to­ber 2013 and re­port­ing the High Court claim as a fraud on the com­pa­ny, it took the un­prece­dent­ed de­ci­sion to trans­fer him to Ca­roni Green.

In a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 28, 2013 from the Chair­man of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed to the act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed. And in that let­ter Mr. Speak­er, the Chair­man ad­vis­es the Act­ing CEO of his trans­fer with to Ca­roni Green as Man­ag­er, with all his terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment, in­clud­ing Mr. Speak­er, a $40,000month­ly com­pen­sa­tion pack­age.

And I say to this Par­lia­ment Mr. Speak­er the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance knows all about what tran­spired in Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed, the High Court claim, the grounds for dis­missal, and the in­cred­i­ble de­ci­sion to trans­fer this em­ploy­ee in­to a lead­er­ship po­si­tion at Ca­roni Green.

So Mr. Speak­er what hap­pens next is not sur­pris­ing. By Feb­ru­ary 2014, Ernst & Young was al­ready asked by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed to con­duct an au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions of Ca­roni Green since Ca­roni Green had been us­ing the re­sources of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed. In May 2014 a draft au­dit re­port from Ernst & Young, point­ed to ma­jor fi­nan­cial prob­lems at Ca­roni Green, con­flicts of in­ter­est in pro­cure­ment, a to­tal lack of lead­er­ship and di­rec­tion at the com­pa­ny, and mount­ing loss­es.

Now this is no sur­prise Mr. Speak­er. Ca­roni Green was op­er­at­ing with about 18 em­ploy­ees. Not one, Mr. Speak­er, was qual­i­fied in or had ex­pe­ri­ence in agri­cul­ture. This com­pa­ny was sup­posed to pro­vide high-lev­el tech­ni­cal ser­vices to pri­vate farm­ers us­ing Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed's lands for cul­ti­va­tion. We had, Mr. Speak­er, IT pro­fes­sion­als deal­ing with farm­ers' con­tracts, mak­ing site vis­its and con­duct­ing meet­ings and ne­go­ti­a­tions with farm­ers.

Mr. Speak­er in Feb­ru­ary 2013, Cab­i­net ap­proved a one-off fi­nan­cial grant of $4 mil­lion to Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed to "ef­fect the re­quired land prepa­ra­tion works on 1800 acres of lands card­ed for cul­ti­va­tion in Phas­es One­and Twoof the Ca­roni Green ini­tia­tive".

Mr. Speak­er, on De­cem­ber 32013, Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed's Chair­man emailed the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance point­ing out that Ca­roni had spent $7 mil­lion on Ca­roni Green, $3 mil­lion more than Cab­i­net had ap­proved. And on that same day Mr. Speak­er, the Min­is­ter re­sponds by email cau­tion­ing that the $4 mil­lion ap­proved by Cab­i­net should not be ex­ceed­ed.

As it turns out Mr. Speak­er, by May 2014, Ca­roni Green had in­curred ex­pen­di­ture of more than $11 mil­lion, with­out hav­ing met the ob­jec­tives of Cab­i­net as set out in that Cab­i­net minute of Feb­ru­ary 2013.

In the face of that Ernst and Young re­port Mr. Speak­er, and in the face of all that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance knows from be­gin­ning to end about Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed and Ca­roni Green Lim­it­ed, on Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 1st. 2014 all em­ploy­ees of Ca­roni Green re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion let­ters.

And Mr. Speak­er, con­trary to what is stat­ed in the Bud­get State­ment 2015 re­gard­ing Ca­roni Green, that has been an ex­pen­sive ex­per­i­ment by this Gov­ern­ment that has now cost tax­pay­ers over $30 mil­lion with­out bring­ing a sin­gle ben­e­fit to the farm­ers of this coun­try.

Mr. Speak­er, we have not­ed with in­ter­est and to our ut­ter amaze­ment that the Gov­ern­ment four years af­ter con­dem­na­tion is now em­brac­ing the much ma­ligned com­mer­cial farm pro­gramme ini­ti­at­ed un­der the PNM.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and his gov­ern­ment are now propos­ing that State agri­cul­tur­al leas­es be­ing dis­trib­uted for food pro­duc­tion can now be freely trad­ed.

What is seem­ing­ly con­tem­plat­ed is that those 8,000-plus two acre parcels of land can now be redi­rect­ed away from agri­cul­ture and be trad­ed on the open re­al es­tate mar­ket with cap­i­tal gains–cash go­ing di­rect­ly to the lease hold­er (lessee).

Can the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance say what will hap­pen to the clause in the agri­cul­tur­al lease, which pro­vides for re­ver­sion of the land to the State at the ex­pi­ra­tion of the lease term? When was this new pol­i­cy hatched? How long will it take for these lands to be moved out of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion for the ben­e­fit and re­al es­tate en­rich­ment of the for­tu­nate few?

In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Diplo­ma­cy, In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance & Trade

Mr Speak­er, be­fore the UNC-led ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice, this coun­try was well on its way to be­ing es­tab­lished as the diplo­mat­ic cap­i­tal of the re­gion. It was al­so well on its way to­wards the op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) to pro­vide fi­nan­cial ser­vices to the re­gion. Arrange­ments were be­ing ramped up to fa­cil­i­tate these two ini­tia­tives.

What did this gov­ern­ment do Mr. Speak­er ... Very much like the very poor judge­ment and short sight­ed­ness dis­played to­wards the in­te­grat­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus es­tab­lished by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion and the 'lay­ing to waste' of the valu­able Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, this Gov­ern­ment dis­man­tled or showed very lit­tle in­ter­est in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions and the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­fra­struc­ture. This gov­ern­ment has been de­void of any de­vel­op­men­tal vi­sion and did not un­der­stand the PNM thrust in­to the In­ter­na­tion­al are­na–In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance and Trade.

Mr. Speak­er the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre deemed "ill-con­ceived" by the for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter and shelved by the UNC-led ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2010, is seem­ing­ly be­ing em­braced now that the new Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has twice ref­er­enced the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre and its ac­com­pa­ny­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments (FDIs) com­po­nent in his bud­get. To­day the PNM is heart­ened to have laid that sol­id, rich foun­da­tion up­on which an In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre can now flour­ish.

Mr. Speak­er, the next PNM gov­ern­ment will en­sure that the ap­pro­pri­ate en­vi­ron­ment is pro­vid­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the strength­en­ing and fur­ther growth of a ro­bust and sus­tain­able In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial are­na, so that Trinidad and To­ba­go can re­tain its po­si­tion as the pre­mier In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre in the Caribbean.

Our for­eign pol­i­cy and for­eign re­la­tions must be such that our pro­file and im­age with­in the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ty is en­hanced. In this way Mr Speak­er, we can pro­mote trade in man­u­fac­tured goods, ser­vices and knowl­edge, while at­tract­ing For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ments (FDIs), With in­creased FDIs the coun­try's econ­o­my will be fur­ther stim­u­lat­ed, gen­er­at­ing greater em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and as­sist­ing our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme.

Mr Speak­er up­on as­sump­tion of Of­fice, the next PNM gov­ern­ment will im­me­di­ate­ly pur­sue arrange­ments for the restora­tion of a bril­liant im­age for our Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, en­sur­ing that an ad­e­quate num­ber of diplo­mat­ic and pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained for­eign ser­vice staff are in place to in­ter­act with the diplo­mat­ic and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty at home and abroad.

Our for­eign min­istry must re­turn to its for­mer place of re­spect and have its staff be­come proud ex­em­plars of the in­ter­na­tion­al and diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty once more.In sum Mr. Speak­er, the diplo­mat­ic as well as the in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can be as­sured that the next PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion will be con­duct­ing the busi­ness of state with the high­est lev­el of in­tegri­ty, hon­esty and de­cen­cy and ex­pects in re­turn mu­tu­al re­spect in our re­la­tion­ships, as we part­ner in build­ing a bet­ter "moth­er" Trinidad and To­ba­go.

I now turn my at­ten­tion to To­ba­go. Mr. Speak­er, the bla­tant at­tempts by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my to mis­rep­re­sent the ap­pli­ca­tion of the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion (DRC) rec­om­men­da­tion for al­lo­cat­ing re­sources to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. You may re­call that in my re­sponse to the bud­get last year, I in­di­cat­ed to this Ho­n­ourable House that, in pro­vi­sion­ing funds to the As­sem­bly, al­lo­ca­tions to oth­er gov­ern­ment min­istries for ex­pen­di­tures in To­ba­go ought not to be in­clud­ed in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the DRC for­mu­la.

Re­gret­tably, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance con­tin­ues to mis­rep­re­sent the DRC for­mu­la and I am be­gin­ning to won­der if this is de­lib­er­ate. It bears re­peat­ing that, ac­cord­ing to le­gal opin­ion of which the Min­is­ter must be aware, the DRC di­rec­tives re­fer on­ly to al­lo­ca­tions to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and not al­lo­ca­tions to oth­er gov­ern­ment min­istries and oth­er agen­cies op­er­at­ing in To­ba­go. The DRC rec­om­men­da­tions stip­u­late that the THA be al­lo­cat­ed be­tween 4.03 and 6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get for re­cur­rent and de­vel­op­ment spend­ing in To­ba­go. There­fore, de­spite the Min­is­ter's ef­forts to leave the im­pres­sion that his gov­ern­ment was so gen­er­ous, he has fooled no one, es­pe­cial­ly the peo­ple of To­ba­go. They know that this gov­ern­ment did the As­sem­bly no favour. The al­lo­ca­tion to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly was just about 4.03 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get, bare­ly what was nec­es­sary to avoid a le­gal chal­lenge.

For fis­cal 2015, the THA was al­lo­cat­ed on­ly about 16 per cent of its re­quest for de­vel­op­ment ex­pen­di­ture. This al­lo­ca­tion is clear­ly woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate and un­less the As­sem­bly is al­lowed to ex­plore al­ter­na­tive fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms, To­ba­go's de­vel­op­men­tal thrust will be se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised and the is­land's abil­i­ty to grow and be part of the Na­tion­al econ­o­my will be cur­tailed. This is short­sight­ed be­cause the Na­tion­al ob­jec­tive should be in search of Na­tion­al growth re­gard­less of where it oc­curs so to sti­fle To­ba­go's po­ten­tial is to re­duce our Na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­fort.

The THA re­quest­ed $40 mil­lion for en­ter­prise de­vel­op­ment but were al­lo­cat­ed on­ly 1 mil­lion. In ad­di­tion, to fund de­vel­op­ment works at Cove though E-ID­COT, the THA re­quest­ed about $65 mil­lion and was on­ly al­lo­cat­ed $2 mil­lion. This is in a bud­get of $64 bil­lion. Clear­ly our pri­or­i­ties are mis­placed.

The THA re­quest­ed about $492 mil­lion to con­tin­ue its ef­forts to re­spond to the de­mand by over 7,000 ap­pli­cants, they were al­lo­cat­ed on­ly $28 mil­lion. This al­lo­ca­tion ob­vi­ous­ly can­not do much to ad­dress the hous­ing prob­lem in To­ba­go. More­over, giv­en the well-known hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty con­straints in To­ba­go, the As­sem­bly re­quest­ed some $8 mil­lion to fi­nance its ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion Fi­nan­cial As­sis­tance Pro­gramme and they were al­lo­cat­ed on­ly $500,000.

Mr. Speak­er, in his bud­get state­ment, the Min­is­ter sig­naled his in­ten­tion to col­lab­o­rate with the THA on its util­i­sa­tion of Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship type arrange­ments to fi­nance key in­fra­struc­ture projects in To­ba­go. The Min­is­ter should, in this bud­get state­ment give some firm com­mit­ment to­wards the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the As­sem­bly's ob­jec­tives.

Mr. Speak­er, notwith­stand­ing ef­forts of the As­sem­bly to di­ver­si­fy the To­ba­go econ­o­my, tourism is and will con­tin­ue, for some time, to be one of the most im­por­tant sec­tors in the To­ba­go econ­o­my. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance makes ref­er­ence to some new in­cen­tives to ex­pand and up­grade room stock in the tourism sec­tor, but all these in­cen­tives will come to naught if trans­porta­tion be­tween T&T is not im­proved in a dig­ni­fied and pre­dictable man­ner.

Over the re­cent Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, do­mes­tic tourism in To­ba­go was se­vere­ly af­fect­ed be­cause of the con­tin­ued in­ef­fi­cien­cy and in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty of Caribbean Air­lines. In this re­gard, I echo the sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by frus­trat­ed com­muters, the To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce, the tourism sec­tor and oth­er is­landers and that this bud­get pro­vides no in­di­ca­tion of re­lief to come from hard­ships ex­pe­ri­enced with the do­mes­tic air bridge. This ser­vice be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad needs to be treat­ed as an es­sen­tial ser­vice and ap­pro­pri­ate sys­tems put in place ac­cord­ing­ly.

The sea bridge sit­u­a­tion is just as scan­dalous. The Min­is­ter boasts that there will be im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy of the sea bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, sim­ply be­cause of the ac­qui­si­tion of a car­go ves­sel which from our re­ports is not fit for pur­pose. Is it true that this ves­sel has been leased for ten years?

Mr. Speak­er, this gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to un­der­mine the re­cov­ery process in the tourism sec­tor by its de­lay or re­fusal to treat with the en­hance­ment of the ANR Robin­son air­port. I was present at the cer­e­mo­ny to re­name the air­port, when in the pres­ence of His Ex­cel­len­cy, the late ANR Robin­son, the as­sur­ance was giv­en that work on the new air­port would start with­in months. It was this kind of fail­ure which led to the with­draw­al of Vir­gin At­lantic from To­ba­go and the prospect of the is­land be­com­ing less com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket place.

To­bag­o­ni­ans are an­gry that the Min­is­ter is now telling us that the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T has re­quest­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion, to sub­mit a pro­pos­al to do im­prove­ment works at both the Pi­ar­co and the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. This is time for ac­tion. We do not need an­oth­er re­port. We know what has to be done so we look for­ward to an up­grad­ed air­port now!

Mr. Speak­er, is­sues of crime and se­cu­ri­ty in To­ba­go re­main a se­ri­ous con­cern for the As­sem­bly but the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to play games and in­dulge in sub­terfuge. In his bud­get state­ment, the Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that two po­lice sta­tions are be­ing con­struct­ed at Old Grange and Rox­bor­ough. These were po­lice sta­tions for which con­tracts were award­ed, un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, but these con­tracts were stopped by this gov­ern­ment and then, four years lat­er, the Min­is­ter has the gall to tell us that con­struc­tion has start­ed.

It is clear that the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment is on­ly linked to win­ning elec­tions. You will re­call that, a few days be­fore the 2013 THA elec­tion, the gov­ern­ment, in an ef­fort to se­duce the peo­ple of To­ba­go and win votes, at­tempt­ed to rush a bill through this House al­leged­ly to grant in­creased au­ton­o­my to To­ba­go.

We re­ject­ed this bill be­cause of nu­mer­ous short­com­ings and our stance was sup­port­ed over­whelm­ing­ly by the peo­ple of To­ba­go. Since then, there has been deaf­en­ing si­lence by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment on the is­sue of To­ba­go's self-gov­ern­ment. In­deed, we can­not tell when last we heard the Prime Min­is­ter use the word To­ba­go and au­ton­o­my in the same sen­tence. And while this is oc­cur­ring, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to fund the Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment to un­der­mine the work and au­thor­i­ty of the As­sem­bly. To fa­cil­i­tate this sin­is­ter plot, al­lo­ca­tions to the re­cur­rent bud­get of the Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment is in­creased from about $32 mil­lions in 2014 to a whop­ping $81 mil­lion in 2015, an in­crease of over 100 per cent. This is a re­cur­rent bud­get for short-term/con­tract em­ploy­ment and oth­er con­tract­ing ser­vices to en­gage friends and fam­i­ly in the per­for­mance of func­tions al­ready as­signed to the As­sem­bly by law. The Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment is en­cour­aged to spend mon­ey in To­ba­go to nib­ble away and un­der­mine the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

How­ev­er, there is good news on the hori­zon and I wish to give the peo­ple of To­ba­go the as­sur­ance that this is the last bud­get in which they will have to treat with these is­sues. As sure as the night fol­lows day, run off or no run off, this gov­ern­ment will be vot­ed out of of­fice, the long held as­pi­ra­tions of the peo­ple of To­ba­go for in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment will be ful­filled and their de­vel­op­ment needs will be ad­dressed. The PNM will abol­ish the un­called for Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment and al­low the THA to prop­er­ly dis­charge on its le­gal func­tions with­out fet­ter and po­lit­i­cal un­der­min­ing.

NA­TION­AL SE­CU­RI­TY

Mr Speak­er, we are all faced with the ma­jor na­tion­al is­sue of bur­geon­ing crime and gen­er­al law­less­ness in our so­ci­ety. No one is safe and many per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go are made to live in fear of crim­i­nal con­duct.

Lis­ten to the failed Gov­ern­ment, "crime has gone down"! Crime re­port­ing has gone down since most peo­ple no longer ex­pect an ef­fec­tive po­lice re­sponse so they don't both­er to re­port the vi­o­la­tions. This will not change un­til there is ev­i­dence of im­proved crime de­tec­tion and suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tions. Ask the cit­i­zen, do you feel safer now? The an­swer is a re­sound­ing no!

From small in­frac­tions to mur­der, the law­break­ers and crim­i­nals seem to have the ad­van­tage. We must re­spond to this state of af­fairs with a clear recog­ni­tion of the need for a more ef­fi­cient and re­spon­sive Po­lice Ser­vice, sup­port­ed by a well-oiled mod­ern in­tel­li­gence -gath­er­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty. We may not need more se­vere le­gal sanc­tions, since in the past ten years ,we have mod­ernised our laws and we are ar­guably, as well placed as any ,to re­spond to the more cre­ative and de­ter­mined law­break­ers with an im­proved pros­e­cu­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

At the end of the spec­trum, we promised to re­form the pe­nal sys­tem with a restora­tive jus­tice phi­los­o­phy, to deal with the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of of­fend­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­peat of­fend­ers!

Mr. Speak­er, lead­er­ship in these mat­ters must come from the gov­ern­ment. It is the gov­ern­ment that is large­ly re­spon­si­ble for the plat­form of law, or­der and se­cu­ri­ty.

Up un­til 2010, there was a clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed and wide­ly ac­cept­ed phi­los­o­phy, dri­ving the mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress this na­tion­al chal­lenge.

The Gov­ern­ment ob­vi­ous­ly did not share this phi­los­o­phy and hav­ing promised on the hus­tings of 2010, that crime would be a thing of the past in 120 days, they set about dis­man­tling our se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al mis­man­age­ment had the ef­fect of mas­sive de­mor­al­i­sa­tion with­in the lo­cal in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty; and wreaked a very se­vere loss of con­fi­dence by our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts, in the world of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and man­age­ment.

The spite­ful dis­man­tling of the SAUTT, with­out im­me­di­ate re­place­ment of this our best ef­fort at "spe­cialised in­tel­li­gence -gath­er­ing" and a sol­id re­sponse to gang ac­tiv­i­ty and or­gan­ised crime, left a void that crim­i­nals oc­cu­pied to all our detri­ment in blood and may­hem!

The fool­ish can­cel­la­tion of the OPV pro­gramme on the sim­plis­tic ar­gu­ment, that we need to "fight crime on the land and not on the sea", ren­dered our bor­ders de­fence­less; and as porous as the num­ber of il­le­gal firearms of every cal­i­bre and ca­pac­i­ty, that now con­fronts and hurt us, touch­ing us all in one way or the oth­er.

Af­ter fouryears of time-wast­ing and waste­ful spend­ing, we now hear the gov­ern­ment shame­less­ly telling us that they pro­pose to pur­chase pa­trol ves­sels with­in the next eigh­teen months. The ones from Colom­bia are be­ing loaded and the one from Chi­na has lost its way.

Mr Speak­er, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is al­so now telling the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that they have on­ly re­cent­ly es­tab­lished a Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Group whose man­date is to deal with hostage sit­u­a­tions, ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties, or­gan­ised crime and gang­land ac­tiv­i­ties.

These, Mr. Speak­er, are pre­cise­ly the mat­ters that SAUTT was man­dat­ed to and was in fact deal­ing with.

All of this Mr. Speak­er, af­ter four ears and $ 21.93 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture! They wast­ed our time; our peace and our prospects. We the peo­ple, feel no bet­ter now! We feel no safer now than we did, when the gov­ern­ment took over this se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty!

The de­tec­tion rate for se­ri­ous crimes is now low­er than the 24% it was, in 2007. It now stands at a pal­try 12 to13%. Even with the gov­ern­ment boast­ing that se­ri­ous crimes have gone down, the de­tec­tion rate is falling. One would have thought that with low­er crime rates, the de­tec­tion rate would have im­proved.

We com­mend our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers who con­tin­ue to work fear­less­ly and tire­less­ly to pro­tect us. We are hap­py to learn that they are see­ing a re­duc­tion in the re­port­ed crimes. We urge cau­tion against com­pla­cen­cy how­ev­er and urge ac­tion to­wards re­gain­ing of the pub­lic con­fi­dence in or­der to avoid un­der- re­port­ing and win pub­lic sup­port.

The sta­tis­tics re­veal that more mur­ders have oc­curred to date, than for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year and most are firearm re­lat­ed. The Gov­ern­ment now pro­pos­es to spend some $62.4 mil­lion dol­lars on ar­moured ve­hi­cles! They at­tempt­ed to pass a mis­guid­ed Sol­dier Bill; plen­ty gun talk from the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty as he en­cour­age our sol­diers to con­vert Laven­tille in­to a mil­i­tary war zone for two weeks fol­low­ing the very un­for­tu­nate and crim­i­nal killing of Lance Cor­po­ral Thomas re­cent­ly; but they would not learn!

Af­ter two weeks of heavy and ro­bust pres­ence in the Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty and be­ing present up to to­day, we have not seen the ar­rest of Cor­po­ral Thomas' killer or killers.

This should tell the Gov­ern­ment that while a heavy mil­i­tary op­tion may be of some val­ue, this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a sub­sti­tute for good, old-fash­ioned, in­ves­tiga­tive po­lice work!

Mr­S­peak­er in the pub­lic in­ter­est, the PNM par­lia­men­tary op­po­si­tion, ap­proached the gov­ern­ment with a ten-point pro­pos­al. We gave the gov­ern­ment the as­sur­ance of our par­lia­men­tary sup­port for these mea­sures. We as­sured them fur­ther, that we would keep an open mind and pro­vide sup­port for any mea­sure they may have ini­ti­at­ed in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

But alas,in­tran­si­gence and in­ac­tion pre­vailed! We pro­posed the im­me­di­ate re­peal of the con­vo­lut­ed law to ap­point a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and its re­place­ment with an eas­i­er method to re­cruit a na­tion­al of T&T by an em­pow­ered Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

(1) an im­me­di­ate man­pow­er au­dit of the Po­lice Ser­vice;

(2) the re­view of the sys­tem of pro­mo­tions;

(3) a spe­cialised in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing plat­form:

(4) the strength­en­ing of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Units by 1400 per­son­nel and the same for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly;

(5) the strength­en­ing of the PCAw­ith im­proved in­ves­tiga­tive and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers.

(6) a Stand­ing Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty ;

(7) strong wit­ness-tam­per­ing leg­is­la­tion;

(8) home in­va­sion leg­is­la­tion;

(9) a sus­tained pro­gram ofur­ban re­new­al;

(10) swift move­ment to the­full ju­ris­dic­tion of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, as our fi­nal Court of Ap­peal.

There is PNM sup­port for all these mea­sures and this is part of the work pro­gramme of the PNM Gov­ern­ment which the peo­ple would elect to solve their prob­lems.

As the world goes we the peo­ple of T&T must count our­selves among the for­tu­nate. We are blessed with sub­stan­tial re­sources in an en­vi­able ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion with good cli­mate and many pleas­ant neigh­bours. We have, over the years, at great sac­ri­fice, in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in our­selves and in our chil­dren's fu­ture. All that is re­quired of us now is to be­have prop­er­ly, make max­i­mum of our po­ten­tial and live in peace and har­mo­ny, proud of our com­plex her­itage.

What has been hap­pen­ing in­stead, more so in re­cent times whilst we all would agree that we want the best for our coun­try we have been no­tice­ably un­der­per­form­ing. Much of our fail­ures come from an ar­ro­gance and a sense of en­ti­tle­ment to one thing or an­oth­er with min­i­mal ef­fort. The PNM is not en­tire­ly in­no­cent of this short­com­ing be­cause we too have made our mis­takes but we have sought to rec­ti­fy them con­sis­tent­ly over 59 years over ster­ling ser­vice to God and coun­try.

What this Gov­ern­ment dan­ger­ous­ly rep­re­sents is the out­come of no plan, no ad­mis­sion of myr­i­ad wrong­do­ing and no com­mit­ment to de­vel­op the coun­try for all the peo­ple. Greed, in­com­pe­tence and smart­man­ism are the op­tions that they have cho­sen and this bud­get is their tat­tered flag.

Mr Speak­er we re­ject it and they must go now!

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Published with permission from HARVARD HEALTH

Published with permission from HARVARD HEALTH

Dr Safeeya Mohammed - Lounges on the Balance Boards

Dr Safeeya Mohammed - Lounges on the Balance Boards

Colette Cyrus- Burnett CEO, Global Food Warrior

Colette Cyrus- Burnett CEO, Global Food Warrior

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