Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says his ad­min­is­tra­tion will con­tin­ue pro­grammes start­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM-led As­sem­bly.

Au­gus­tine was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to ques­tions about fix­ing the is­sue of poor work ethics on the is­land.

“I know the out­go­ing Chief Sec­re­tary an­nounced the start­ing of some acad­e­my of sorts for the pub­lic ser­vice and that is one of the things that we will con­tin­ue be­cause it is some­thing we ad­vo­cat­ed for as well,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said while on the cam­paign trail lead­ing up to De­cem­ber 6, he had pledged to con­tin­ue “good” projects.

“I said it on the plat­form and I don’t know if peo­ple be­lieved me then or not, but I said since on the plat­form, there are some things that we will just con­tin­ue and there is noth­ing wrong with that. Trinidad and To­ba­go will do bet­ter if suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue the things that are ac­tu­al­ly good— that will al­low for con­ti­nu­ity and ac­tu­al growth and de­vel­op­ment,” Au­gus­tine said.

As for treat­ing the is­sue it­self, Au­gus­tine pledged to do more and ask for more from work­ers. He said many THA em­ploy­ees were kept on con­tract for years, rob­bing them of re­tire­ment ben­e­fits and de­mo­ti­vat­ing them.

“I want to do two things—I want to de­mand more from our work­ers but I al­so want to make our work­ers com­fort­able and hap­py. So when I de­mand more, you can’t com­plain be­cause I have made your work­ing con­di­tions bet­ter,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of food se­cu­ri­ty in To­ba­go, Au­gus­tine said he hopes to achieve this by the end of the PDP’s first four-year term in of­fice.

He said he was giv­ing the par­ty four years be­cause he does not want to just get in­to agri­cul­ture or land dis­tri­b­u­tion for farm­ers.

Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go can­not com­pete with agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts be­cause they do not pro­duce enough. How­ev­er, he said if the is­land gets in­to agro-pro­cess­ing, it can be­come com­pet­i­tive.

“I’ve made the point time and time again that we are miss­ing alot of in­come be­cause we are not do­ing the val­ue add to these prod­ucts, so we have a sit­u­a­tion on this is­land where peo­ple just mind their goats, sell them just as they are, you plant on the farm, you reap and you go on the side of the high­way and try to get every­thing sold.”

Au­gus­tine said the Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­source, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Di­vi­sion will not on­ly fo­cus on get­ting these prod­ucts to the To­ba­go mar­ket but al­so to Trinidad.

He said the di­vi­sion needs to move quick­ly to en­sure To­ba­go be­comes food se­cure.

“If there is a dis­as­ter in Trinidad, there will be a dis­as­ter in To­ba­go. If for some rea­son, the boats or the plane can­not move, be­cause there is a mas­sive earth­quake, then we will have chal­lenges.

“Look at what was hap­pen­ing when the boat, the fer­ry sys­tem was down, look at how many com­plaints we got, look at how the dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor al­most col­lapsed.”

Asked whether the THA has enough mon­ey to fi­nance the projects he has pro­posed so far, he said all the new sec­re­taries and as­sis­tant sec­re­taries will be briefed on Mon­day about the As­sem­bly’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

He said his first act as Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my would be to do an as­sess­ment of what mon­ey the As­sem­bly had, what was spent and what was list­ed. He said he will present a lean, stream­lined bud­get in Jan­u­ary 2022 when he de­ter­mines how much mon­ey is left in the THA cof­fers.

“I can as­sure you if our monies were wast­ed, I mean we are just in Jan­u­ary, and the fi­nan­cial year ends in Sep­tem­ber, if our monies have al­ready been ex­pend­ed, I will no doubt go back to Mr Prime Min­is­ter, Mr Im­bert to re­quest ad­di­tion­al sums- and I’ll be sure to tell them it was their own peo­ple in To­ba­go, their own broth­ers and sis­ters who spent it out and wast­ed it out and now we don’t have any for the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” Au­gus­tine said.

He al­so pledged to make the de­tails of the THA’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion pub­lic, so To­bag­o­ni­ans can see for them­selves where mon­ey was spent or wast­ed.