Gail Alexan­der

A fi­nance bill to sup­ple­ment and vary the 2012-2013 Bud­get will be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day, Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials say. It will be the first such bill on the 2013 Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Bill which last Oc­to­ber gave T&T a $58 bil­lion bud­get for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai is ex­pect­ed to pi­lot the bill when the House meets at 1.30 pm.

List­ed on the Par­lia­ment agen­da for de­bate is the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill along with a mo­tion on the Cus­toms Amend­ment Act and oth­er bills. Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed said they be­lieve de­bate on the To­ba­go bill may con­tin­ue, but were un­cer­tain if it would be dealt with or which items would get pri­or­i­ty.

House leader Roodal Mooni­lal didn't an­swer calls yes­ter­day to an­swer ques­tions on the mat­ter. The Op­po­si­tion PNM has re­fused to sup­port the bill through which Gov­ern­ment has pro­posed self-gov­ern­ment mech­a­nisms for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Ques­tions on to­day's agen­da per­tain to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of oc­cu­pants of hous­ing units in up­scale ar­eas and if any such per­sons re­ceived any hous­ing al­lowance in the State of­fices which they hold. Oth­er queries re­late to jobs cre­at­ed at Labid­co since 2010, jobs lost and mea­sures Gov­ern­ment has tak­en to pro­tect fish­er­men from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties on the seas since 2010.