Last week, Finance Minister Larry Howai delivered this country's largest budget to date, $64.6 billion. Unfortunately for young people like me, this level of expenditure will not last forever. The recent Ryder Scott report has found that our proven natural gas reserves have again fallen, this time by seven per cent. Our energy wealth is slowly disappearing, and if we fail to diversify our economy, my generation will be the ones to suffer for our collective inaction.
I have closely followed the budget debate. I am perhaps one of the few young people who still view politics as a vehicle for change. Much of my generation are either disillusioned or simply uninterested. Our politicians on the whole have failed to capture our imagination, far less our trust.
Gone are the days of the visionary leaders that we read about, who dedicated their lives to the service of the newly-independent land of their birth. The unfortunate perception of our population today, is that our current crop of politicians is only there for self-enrichment. Those who are different should differentiate themselves and quickly. They need to touch base with the population to show that their intentions are honourable.
What the population yearns for are leaders who are humble, honest and accountable.
Despite all this expenditure, things just don't seem to work as they should. In the education sector, there are teachers who don't show up to work because they know only the ministry can fire them. Thousands of students go through the system without getting basic skills, let alone the necessary critical-thinking skills needed to survive in the 21st century. In the health sector, equipment and medication go missing at our nation's hospitals and no one is held responsible.
Again, it is the population that must suffer and spend hours to get service. Despite the government's boasts of significantly raising the supply of water so that the majority of the population can now receive a 24-hour supply, admirable it may be, the sad reality after 52 years is that still much of our country does not have that luxury.
The saddest predicament of all facing our country is that our ambitious educated people are leaving by the planeloads. According to a recently released Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) report, 79 per cent of our labour force who hold university degrees have migrated to developed countries, no doubt in search of a better life. The rest of us that remain, are trying to be the next doctor, lawyer, businessperson or some other high-paying profession, as that appears the only way we can comfortably afford a middle-class home.
It is disheartening for young people who sacrifice to get their university degrees, simply to realise with their first pay check, that owning their own home will be a struggle. While the government in this budget is seeking to address the housing problem, much more will have to be done through the realm of public-private partnerships, where the government sells unused state-owned land to private developers at market rates.
As a young person, I do not believe it is all doom and gloom. Our country has spent billions of dollars on free university education for my generation. We must now attract suitable investment in investment banking, alternative energy and medical tourism, among other sectors, to sustainably diversify our economy.
Most importantly, it is time we empower our greatest asset, our young people, to create their own businesses and lead our country forward. T&T must not be known as the nation that squandered its resources, but as a beacon of success for post-colonial societies.
Adam Raffoul
via e-mail