Zahra Gor­don

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Rolph Bal­go­b­in is call­ing for a "delink" be­tween politi­cians and crim­i­nals. He was speak­ing at a pre-bud­get dis­cus­sion, host­ed by Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Past Stu­dents As­so­ci­a­tion, at the school's au­di­to­ri­um, San Fer­nan­do, on Wednes­day. Bal­go­b­in said so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes, such as the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep), were a bur­den on so­ci­ety which fund­ed crim­i­nals. He said the pro­grammes had long be­come in­ef­fec­tive and were po­lit­i­cal­ly en­trenched. Bal­go­b­in point­ed out that Cepep and oth­er sim­i­lar pro­grammes al­so neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed small busi­ness­es and the agri­cul­ture sec­tor be­cause they ab­sorbed valu­able labour re­sources and did not pro­duce the en­tre­pre­neurs the ini­tial pro­gramme plan had en­vi­sioned.

He added: "The Gov­ern­ment needs to be clear on the role of busi­ness in so­ci­ety. Cepep im­pos­es a drag on the ef­fi­cien­cy of the SME (Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es) sec­tor and pre­vents them from con­tribut­ing to a pro­duc­tive econ­o­my." That "de­pen­den­cy syn­drome" cre­at­ed by Cepep, he warned, would be­come dis­as­trous when oil and gas rev­enues ran out. The pan­elists, who in­clud­ed Josanne Leonard, Ian Nar­ine. Dr Patrick Wat­son, for­mer sen­a­tor Mar­i­ano Browne and En­er­gy Cham­ber pres­i­dent Roger Pack­er all agreed that so­cial wel­fare spend­ing should be ad­dressed in the 2013 bud­get, which will be read on Oc­to­ber 8.

How­ev­er, Wat­son al­so aired con­cerns about a grow­ing per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion in Gov­ern­ment. "The po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion is not favourable to a bud­get that is harsh," he added. Wat­son ad­vised there were cer­tain "short- term and im­me­di­ate" ac­tions Gov­ern­ment need­ed to take to curb deficit and di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my which, he said, was too heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on oil and gas. Among his sug­ges­tions were the phas­ing out of the fu­el sub­sidy, a re­view of GATE spend­ing and re­in­state­ment of the land and prop­er­ty tax­es.