Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of In­dus­try Lin­coln Rag­birs­ingh says he hopes the Gov­ern­ment, in its 2012 bud­get, re­struc­tures its tax col­lec­tion sys­tem and en­sures that Chi­nese busi­ness peo­ple pay tax­es. In a pre-bud­get in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Rag­birs­ingh said the mush­room­ing of Chi­nese- owned pri­vate mem­bers clubs and food out­lets had sti­fled lo­cal busi­ness in the Pe­nal/Debe dis­trict. Not­ing that most of the clubs were not part of the T&T Pri­vate Mem­bers As­so­ci­a­tion, Rag­birs­ingh added that it was high time for the Gov­ern­ment to take ac­tion to en­sure that all of the for­eign-owned busi­ness­es were above board.

Rag­birs­ingh added that is­sues of un­em­ploy­ment must al­so be tack­led. Say­ing that he did not be­lieve that un­em­ploy­ment was 4.8 per cent, Rag­birs­ingh con­tend­ed: "The ev­i­dence of un­em­ploy­ment is all around...The Gov­ern­ment has to ad­dress this. "Gov­ern­ment has to recog­nise that this is not elec­tion year and there is need to stim­u­late the econ­o­my and pro­vide em­ploy­ment." He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment boost small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es. "This may be one way of tack­ling un­em­ploy­ment," Rag­birs­ingh said. "I want to see more con­tracts giv­en to small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, not just award­ed to the well-known big con­trac­tors...That is where the prob­lem is.

"The big con­trac­tors are ben­e­fit­ing, the medi­um and small en­tr­erpre­neurs are suf­fer­ing." On the is­sue of health­care, Rag­birs­ingh said the en­tire health sys­tem must be up­grad­ed. He said in­stead of giv­ing monies to Cli­co share­hold­ers, the Gov­ern­ment should use that mon­ey to build more hos­pi­tals. "The San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is a mess...We re­al­ly need re­form of the health­care sys­tem," Rag­birs­ingh said. He al­so not­ed that in­stead of dis­trib­ut­ing so many hand­outs, the Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ty. He added that he hoped the 2012 bud­get would show­case av­enues for growth and de­vel­op­ment in T&T.