Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Bed­lam broke out in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when Trade Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment would spend $1 mil­lion on a na­tion­al beau­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme to plant poui trees along high­ways—prompt­ing Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land to ac­cuse the ad­min­is­tra­tion of pay­ing for work CEPEP work­ers were al­ready do­ing.

Scot­land made the com­ment dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s (SFC) ex­am­i­na­tion of the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism’s ex­pen­di­ture for fis­cal 2026.

He ques­tioned the $1.1 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion list­ed for “beau­ti­fi­ca­tion works through clus­ter plant­i­ng of Poui trees on the na­tion’s high­ways.”

“You’re say­ing that this Gov­ern­ment is fund­ing at least $1 mil­lion for clus­ter plant­i­ng on the na­tion’s high­ways? Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter, wasn’t it CEPEP work­ers who were al­ready do­ing this very same thing—plant­i­ng on the high­ways?” Scot­land asked.

Ma­haraj replied that the ini­tia­tive was part of a broad­er tourism plan.

“It’s a tourist at­trac­tion—like Japan’s cher­ry blos­soms—to beau­ti­fy the coun­try. You make it all over the coun­try and have all the chil­dren in­volved in this,” he said.

When Scot­land asked whether work­ers would be hired, Ma­haraj said, “We’re hop­ing to hire a lot of vol­un­teers, es­pe­cial­ly school chil­dren.”

Scot­land re­spond­ed, “But you’ve al­lo­cat­ed $1 mil­lion—so you’re go­ing to pay school chil­dren mon­ey?”

Ma­haraj replied, “One has to have a cost in­volved.”

Scot­land coun­tered, “Isn’t this, sir, ex­act­ly what the CEPEP work­ers were do­ing?”

“No,” Ma­haraj said flat­ly.

Scot­land pressed, “They weren’t plant­i­ng trees and beau­ti­fy­ing high­ways?”

“This is tourism, sir,” Ma­haraj re­tort­ed.

At that point, SFC chair­man Jagdeo Singh in­ter­vened, say­ing he be­lieved “that was enough,” but the ex­changes quick­ly es­ca­lat­ed in­to shout­ing across the cham­ber.

When Gov­ern­ment MPs ar­gued that the is­sue “didn’t arise,” Scot­land shot back, “How you mean it doesn’t arise? It ac­tu­al­ly aris­es— but you are ashamed be­cause you are the ones!”

The ar­gu­ment de­scend­ed in­to a shout­ing match, with Gov­ern­ment mem­bers ac­cus­ing Op­po­si­tion MPs of “hooli­gan­ism” and PNM MPs de­fend­ing their con­duct.

Singh re­peat­ed­ly tried to re­store or­der, call­ing out: “OK, enough of that. Every­one, calm down.”

Scot­land, re­fus­ing to back down, shout­ed, “Don’t call me a hooli­gan! I’m de­fend­ing the rights of my peo­ple!”

Ma­haraj al­so de­clined to an­swer when PNM’s Hans Des Vi­gnes ques­tioned him about the long-de­layed San­dals To­ba­go project.

“I can’t an­swer that at this point,” he said briefly.

Des Vi­gnes al­so queried a $5 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the “re­vival of strand­ed and dis­tressed as­sets.” Ma­haraj ex­plained that sev­er­al such as­sets ex­ist across T&T.

“At one point, we used to make all the hair re­lax­er we use in T&T, and there was equip­ment that op­er­at­ed 24/7 pro­duc­ing this. All the equip­ment is still there, moth­balled,” he said, adding that pri­vate in­vestors could re­ac­ti­vate the equip­ment un­der the right con­di­tions.

Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young in­ter­ject­ed that “busi­ness­peo­ple wouldn’t moth­ball equip­ment if it was prof­itable,” adding, “With glob­al­i­sa­tion it has be­come very dif­fi­cult for lo­cal in­dus­try to com­pete — that may be the rea­son for moth­balling.”

Ma­haraj iden­ti­fied the for­mer T&T Iron and Steel Com­pa­ny (TTIS) as an­oth­er ma­jor strand­ed as­set, but Young not­ed that it was not a pub­lic com­pa­ny. He al­so said the min­istry’s $400,000 al­lo­ca­tion was in­suf­fi­cient to reg­u­late the scrap-iron in­dus­try and im­ple­ment new mea­sures to pre­vent crim­i­nal­i­ty from re-en­ter­ing the sec­tor.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj told the Com­mit­tee that the prac­tice of hous­ing vir­tu­al court­rooms at po­lice sta­tions will be dis­con­tin­ued.

He said, “The Gov­ern­ment will move all vir­tu­al court­rooms out of po­lice sta­tions, with the ju­di­cia­ry’s con­sent. They will be re­lo­cat­ed to es­tab­lished court­rooms in near­by ar­eas.”

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge al­so de­clined to dis­close in­for­ma­tion on T&T’s mil­i­tary as­sets, de­spite ques­tions from Scot­land.

“Giv­ing the num­bers would, in essence, be telegraph­ing to the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise the ex­tent of our fleet,” Sturge said.

He al­so re­fused to an­swer ques­tions about which agen­cies re­pair se­cu­ri­ty ve­hi­cles, how many are non-ser­vice­able, or the cur­rent size of the Reg­i­ment’s ve­hi­cle fleet.

“I will not an­swer that for ob­vi­ous rea­sons,” he said, cit­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Sturge, how­ev­er, list­ed sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties un­der­tak­en by the T&T De­fence Force, Air Guard and Coast Guard for 2025.