Yvonne Ba­boolal

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has got a 50 per cent short­fall in the amount it re­quest­ed in the 2013/2014 bud­get, and is on a mis­sion to get an in­crease, one which "may cli­max in Port-of-Spain," THA chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don warned on Thurs­day.Lon­don's bold stand came three days af­ter the PNM won the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions in Trinidad.

Claim­ing the THA was now forced in­to a po­si­tion where it has to rewrite all its 2014 de­vel­op­ment plans, Lon­don said the sit­u­a­tion may lead to a mo­tion be­ing pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley."We have to to­tal­ly re­con­fig­ure our mind­set and our plans. That's the sit­u­a­tion in which we have found our­selves. We have to de­liv­er 50 per cent of what we have promised."

Lon­don was speak­ing at Thurs­day's ple­nary ses­sion of the THA in Scar­bor­ough on a mo­tion pre­sent­ed by Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise Joel Jack on the is­sue.Dur­ing de­bate on the mo­tion he ad­dressed an as­sem­bly which com­prised on­ly mem­bers of the rul­ing PNM, since the par­ty won all the seats in the Jan­u­ary THA elec­tion.Lon­don said there was al­so a 20 per cent short­fall from what the THA had re­quest­ed for de­vel­op­ment projects.

He used strong words in ref­er­ence to the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment and its re­la­tion­ship with the THA dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion: Cal­lous, in­sen­si­tive, vic­ti­mol­o­gy, hostage, plot.Lon­don said the THA's re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment was rocky."The on­ly friends of To­bag­o­ni­ans re­side in To­ba­go," he said. "There are no friends out­side.

"There is am­ple proof that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will re­main un­pre­dictable and rocky un­til 18 months down the road, when the Gov­ern­ment changes."Lon­don claimed that ear­li­er this year, Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised she would meet with him once every three months."On June 14 we met and smiled with one an­oth­er and so on."

He said on Ju­ly 29 he wrote the PM, re­mind­ing her of that meet­ing, in which they spoke about hav­ing a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship, and com­plained that, since then, he had heard noth­ing from her.On Au­gust 26, he said, he got a let­ter from the PM say­ing con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to the mat­ter he had raised."Two months lat­er, the mat­ter still un­der con­sid­er­a­tion," he said.

Lon­don spoke af­ter Jack's mo­tion, which was filed to ex­press the THA's dis­sat­is­fac­tion with its bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for the fis­cal year 2014, and to seek the ap­proval of the House to ex­plore all al­ter­na­tive fund­ing and fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms un­der the THA Act to ad­vance and ac­cel­er­ate the im­ple­men­ta­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of cap­i­tal projects on the is­land.

The mo­tion al­so called for the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil to be man­dat­ed to en­sure the com­ple­tion of all ma­jor on-go­ing cap­i­tal projects, in­clud­ing the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary and the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex.It al­so called for the preser­va­tion of em­ploy­ment lev­els through­out the as­sem­bly, es­pe­cial­ly with­in vul­ner­a­ble so­cial safe­ty net pro­grammes such as URP and CEPEP, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of To­ba­go's so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment agen­da, as out­lined in its Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Plan.

Jack said there were sig­nif­i­cant short­falls in what the THA re­quest­ed for sev­er­al oth­er sec­tors, in­clud­ing health, ed­u­ca­tion, tourism and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.He said the THA re­quest­ed $70 mil­lion for URP and was al­lo­cat­ed on­ly $19 mil­lion in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's bud­get, a $51 mil­lion short­fall.The THA re­quest­ed $58.7 mil­lion for CEPEP but was al­lo­cat­ed on­ly $8 mil­lion, a $50.7 mil­lion short­fall, he added.

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THA sec­re­tary of fi­nance Joel Jack has said To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to be in charge and to take charge of To­ba­go's de­vel­op­ment, bud­get un­der­fund­ing notwith­stand­ing.In his pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing a mo­tion on the mat­ter in the THA last Thurs­day, Jack list­ed a num­ber of strate­gies which he said could mit­i­gate against the im­pact of a $2.492 bil­lion gap in the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go.

He said he and chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don have al­ready ap­proached the Min­istry of Fi­nance with a suite of pro­pos­als to en­sure that vi­able de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes can pro­ceed.These in­clud­ed:

�2Long-term bond fi­nanc­ing

�2The es­tab­lish­ment of a To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Bank

�2Pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships (PPP)

Jack said while Howai was open to the ex­plo­ration of PPP, he de­clined to con­sid­er is­su­ing bonds, cit­ing a re­luc­tance to add to the coun­try's debt bur­den.Among oth­er strate­gies out­lined by Jack to deal with the un­der­fund­ing are:

�2An as­sem­bly-wide pro­gram­ming ad­just­ment, with pri­or­i­ty projects agreed by all sec­re­taries

�2The re­de­ploy­ment of bud­get and non-bud­get cash re­sources to meet fi­nanc­ing needs

�2Tighter bud­getary man­age­ment head­ed by THA sec­re­taries.

Jack reaf­firmed the com­mit­ment of the Lon­don ad­min­is­tra­tion that, notwith­stand­ing the se­vere un­der­fund­ing of the fis­cal 2014 bud­get, it would guar­an­tee the con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment of all THA and con­tract work­ers, main­tain URP and CEPEP pro­grammes and work to­wards the con­clu­sion of all out­stand­ing ma­jor projects.