De­spite the sweet­en­ers an­nounced in the 2019/2020 na­tion­al bud­get, labour lead­ers and econ­o­mists be­lieve many of them are mere­ly po­lit­i­cal of­fer­ings by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ahead of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment and gen­er­al elec­tions.
At the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OTWU) and Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League’s (CCULTT)’s an­nu­al Peo­ple’s Sec­tor Post-Bud­get Break­fast Fo­rum yes­ter­day at Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do, speak­ers tore down sev­er­al of Gov­ern­ment's ini­tia­tives for eco­nom­ic growth, pover­ty re­duc­tion and gen­der de­vel­op­ment.

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah de­scribed the bud­get as pa­pi­er-mache, say­ing that about 30 per cent of the in­for­ma­tion was cut from the pre­vi­ous doc­u­ment and past­ed in­to the new. List­ed in last year’s bud­get that reap­peared on Mon­day in­clud­ed the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in To­ba­go. In 2018, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert told the Par­lia­ment that the Gov­ern­ment was at an ad­vanced stage of se­cur­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-rec­og­nized brand op­er­a­tor for the 198 room re­sort. Im­bert said then that the op­er­a­tor, three in­vestors had con­duct­ed site vis­its and sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als in Sep­tem­ber 2018. He said the gov­ern­ment was “mak­ing tremen­dous ef­forts to have in place on Jan­u­ary 1, 2019, an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized brand man­ag­er for the Re­sort. How­ev­er, Im­bert said on Mon­day that the brand man­ag­er was iden­ti­fied and will as­sume op­er­a­tor­ship while the Gov­ern­ment un­der­takes the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and out­fit­ting works on the ho­tel. Up­on com­ple­tion of those works, the ho­tel will be re­brand­ed un­der the new op­er­a­tor.
Ab­du­lah al­so point­ed out that the com­ple­tion of the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal was in­clud­ed in the 2019 bud­get but has again ap­peared this year. The up­grades of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the com­ple­tion of the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, the es­tab­lish­ment of the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, Prop­er­ty Tax, Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment,  Skin­ner Park and San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front re­de­vel­op­ments were al­so plans in the old bud­get.
While an es­ti­mat­ed 194,000 peo­ple are to ben­e­fit from a $2.50 in­crease in the min­i­mum wage, econ­o­mist Hay­den Blade be­lieves this will do lit­tle to lift them over the pover­ty line. The in­crease will see the cur­rent min­i­mum wage earn­ers' salaries rise by $20 a day.
“How much is rent in San Fer­nan­do these days? For two peo­ple in a lit­tle apart­ment. Af­ter you’re fin­ished pay­ing rent, how much mon­ey do you have to buy food? What about trans­port? I’m ask­ing you, how are you go­ing to ex­ist on $2400? But here is the dis­re­spect in all of this, you can’t ex­ist on $2400 but the great cel­e­bra­tions have oc­curred, you must now ex­ist on $2800. Now you can save abun­dant­ly and buy HDC bonds so that you can pay down on your up­com­ing pur­chase of an HDC prop­er­ty. That is the dis­re­spect that we ac­cept from our politi­cians. You can’t ex­ist on $15 an hour, but sure­ly you shall ex­ist and live an abun­dant life on $17.50,” Blades said while ap­plaud­ing the move sar­cas­ti­cal­ly. He de­scribed the bud­get as a con­coc­tion to woo vot­ers af­ter al­most five years of mi­nus­cule eco­nom­ic growth. He said Gov­ern­ment must come with a dif­fer­ent ap­proach.
OW­TU gen­er­al sec­re­tary Richard Lee said the Union has been lob­by­ing for a min­i­mum wage of $20 per hour. De­spite the in­crease, Lee be­lieves that many peo­ple will re­main be­low the pover­ty line. He was scep­ti­cal about Im­bert’s com­ment that un­em­ploy­ment re­mained at a low lev­el, giv­en that Petrotrin, TSTT, UTT and oth­er com­pa­nies un­der­took mass re­trench­ments in the last year. He ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment had used tem­po­rary URP work to boost em­ploy­ment fig­ures.
While OJT trainees are set to get a 10 per cent in­crease in their stipends and de­spite Gov­ern­ment's plan to in­crease the in­take for the pro­gramme to 8000 from De­cem­ber 1, Trinidad Youth Coun­cil pres­i­dent Shan­ice Webb said em­ploy­ers used the pro­gramme for cheap labour. Webb said there is no re­al plan­ning for youth em­ploy­ment fol­low­ing the pro­gramme and it is ei­ther they sit at home job­less or re­turn to school, on­ly to strug­gle to find jobs there­after. 
Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan said the gov­ern­ment was spend­ing more mon­ey to build a high­way to To­co than in­vest­ing in agri­cul­ture. Khan said while the Health Min­istry con­tin­ues to get a large chunk of the bud­get, the food im­port bill con­tin­ues to rise, with im­porters bring­ing in foods that cause cit­i­zens to fall ill and fill up the hos­pi­tals. Khan be­lieves this trend con­tin­ues as friends of the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit.