Gail Alexan­der

While Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert may be cel­e­brat­ing that the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund thinks he’s do­ing a good job - the ques­tion is who is he do­ing a good job for?

“... Be­cause it cer­tain­ly isn’t for T&T peo­ple,” added UNC MP Dave Tan­coo (Fi­nance spokesman) yes­ter­day.

Com­ment­ing on the re­cent IMF re­view and the Fi­nance Min­istry’s an­nounce­ment on it, Tan­coo yes­ter­day said, “But the Min­istry and Gov­ern­ment’s re­al per­for­mance is rate among the peo­ple of the coun­try who live every day un­der this Gov­ern­ment’s poli­cies - and suf­fer in some way!

“Out­side of agen­cies’ crunch­ing num­bers and go­ing over doc­u­ments, the re­al­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial man­age­ment is re­flect­ed in what you see around with pover­ty, high prices, in­fla­tion and high crime. In my own con­stituen­cy, I’ve had to re­sort to launch­ing a pe­ti­tion de­mand­ing that the Gov­ern­ment takes ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress the wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture cri­sis. It fol­lows years of failed promis­es from the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide a reg­u­lar, re­li­able sup­ply of wa­ter.

“Strug­gling peo­ple are now un­der a heavy fi­nan­cial bur­den, as they must now find ad­di­tion­al funds to cov­er their own wa­ter needs. So, T&T is in fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis and so­cial cri­sis is al­so com­ing.”

Mean­while, UNC MP Rod­ney Charles has writ­ten Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al seek­ing their as­sis­tance in de­mand­ing that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be done in­to the fund­ing of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s new Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters.

Charles said, “While such sen­si­tive con­tent need not be shared with the pub­lic, the TTPS, FIU and Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit must be pro­vid­ed with the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion to en­sure that pro­ceeds from hu­man traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing aren’t part of Bal­isi­er House con­struc­tion fund­ing.

“It’s time. Nigel Stod­dard, Act­ing Di­rec­tor of the FIU, Dr Saman­tha Chaitram, Di­rec­tor of the CTU and CoP Er­la Christo­pher fol­low the mon­ey and de­ter­mine once and for all who re­al­ly fund­ed Bal­isi­er House. If PM Kei­th Row­ley has noth­ing to hide, he should have no prob­lem pro­vid­ing the list of donors im­me­di­ate­ly.

“We hope Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al can use its pow­ers and en­cour­age T&T’s in­ves­tiga­tive bod­ies to con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

MP Dr Rishad Seecher­an al­so yes­ter­day called on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to col­lab­o­rate ef­fec­tive­ly with the Health Min­istry to en­sure there’s no se­ri­ous out­break of the con­ta­gious hand, foot and mouth dis­ease through­out T&T.

He said, “The dis­cov­ery of the dis­ease among stu­dents of Guaico Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School must be im­me­di­ate­ly and thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed. The con­ta­gious dis­ease could be much more wide­spread in the school com­mu­ni­ty than ini­tial­ly de­tect­ed, and could in­fect many more stu­dents, in ad­di­tion to their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies and friends.

“The trans­mis­sion of the dis­ease is alarm­ing, es­pe­cial­ly since it is tak­ing place mere days be­fore the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion. Stu­dents are at risk of be­ing un­der quar­an­tine and hav­ing to miss their En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion.”

He added, “There must be a vig­or­ous pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign to ad­vise the so­ci­ety that the dis­ease spreads eas­i­ly through touch­ing, kiss­ing, cough­ing, sneez­ing and by touch­ing sur­faces where the virus is present. The coun­try must al­so be told that peo­ple could trans­mit the virus to oth­ers for days af­ter the symp­toms go away or even if they have no symp­toms.”