I read re­cent­ly that Por­tu­gal has scrapped four pub­lic hol­i­days in an aus­ter­i­ty dri­ve as their econ­o­my is strug­gling. The four hol­i­days are: All Saints Day, Cor­pus Christi, Por­tuguese Re­pub­lic, Por­tuguese In­de­pen­dence.Please note that All Saints and Cor­pus Christi are Chris­t­ian hol­i­days and for a "Chris­t­ian" coun­try they must be com­mend­ed. They did ne­go­ti­ate with the Vat­i­can and it was agreed ful­ly.

I be­lieve that T&T should fol­low Por­tu­gal and I would sug­gest the fol­low­ing four be scrapped: Cor­pus Christi, Labour Day, Re­pub­lic Day and Box­ing Day.We can ne­go­ti­ate with the trade unions where Labour Day can be cel­e­brat­ed on the sec­ond Sat­ur­day of May an­nu­al­ly. The coun­try los­es more mon­ey when a hol­i­day falls dur­ing the week com­pared with a Sat­ur­day.Trinidad needs a re­duc­tion in hol­i­days to im­prove its com­pet­i­tive­ness and to boost its eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. A pro­ject­ed growth rate of one or two per cent is sim­ply too small.

We need to sit down with the T&T Cham­ber, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber, DO­MA ,TTMA and all oth­er cham­bers to map out a pol­i­cy to re­duce the amount of pub­lic hol­i­days cel­e­brat­ed lo­cal­ly.One must look at the size of our bud­get deficit which is grow­ing an­nu­al­ly. This deficit is sim­ply too large and the Gov­ern­ment needs to be cau­tioned about its spend­ing. One has to look at our neigh­bour­ing Caribbean economies which are strug­gling, with the ex­cep­tion of Guyana.

The amount of so­cial pro­grammes, grants, ham­pers etc, is grow­ing un­der this gov­ern­ment. When the UNC was in op­po­si­tion they use to con­demn the PNM on reck­less spend­ing and now they are do­ing the same.They are bor­row­ing too much mon­ey to fund these pro­gramme which is lead­ing to a de­pen­dence syn­drome.The fund­ing to Cepep/URP and dai­ly paid make-work schemes should be re­duced start­ing in this year's bud­get and then grad­u­al­ly every year.

We sim­ply need to save mon­ey and in­vest wise­ly.

Con­cerned