Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is be­ing starved of some $625 mil­lion in funds for the cur­rent quar­ter, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Dr Anselm Lon­don said.

"Just a few days be­fore the THA elec­tions and we have not re­ceived the monies due to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly some two weeks now. I have reached a con­clu­sion very quick­ly that is part of a larg­er ef­fort to starve the THA of funds, and I say so with­out equiv­o­ca­tion, and to place us in­to a po­si­tion where we can­not pay our bills" he said.

Lon­don is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Lar­ry Howai and Min­is­ter for To­ba­go's De­vel­op­ment Dr Del­mon Bak­er to has­ten the process since peo­ple em­ployed with the THA and sup­pli­ers are be­ing af­fect­ed. "We do not have ac­cess to the fi­nan­cial mar­ket through bor­row­ing and I think this is a cal­lous kind of game be­ing played with peo­ple's lives, whether they are reg­u­lar pub­lic ser­vants, short-term or sup­pli­ers.

He added: "If the THA is starved of funds, it means Mr Sandy (Hyl­ton Sandy, sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture and Pub­lic Util­i­ties), who has one of the biggest work­force in To­ba­go would be un­able to pay his wages and you make the cal­cu­la­tion from there. If peo­ple don't get their wages, they would be vex with you and there­fore pun­ish Orville Lon­don and the rest of this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion."

Over the past two weeks, work­ers em­ployed with the THA, in­clud­ing from the URP and Cepep, have com­plained about not re­ceiv­ing wages.