Gail Alexan­der

Lack of plans and bad plans were among the re­spons­es from var­i­ous quar­ters to the first part of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's ad­dress to the na­tion on Sun­day night.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised Row­ley's tele­vised ad­dress as lack­ing plans, while of­fi­cials of the T&T Cham­ber were await­ing last night's sec­ond part of the ad­dress to hear Gov­ern­ment's plans.

The Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) said the plans so far have put T&T in­to a deep­er hole, rather than lift­ing it from one.

The first part of Row­ley's ad­dress was de­vot­ed in large part to ac­cus­ing the for­mer Per­sad-Bisses­sar Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ad­min­is­tra­tion of wast­ing bor­rowed bil­lions and blam­ing them for T&T poor fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

Row­ley claimed his Gov­ern­ment lift­ed T&T out of the hole in his ad­dress, filmed at NA­PA in Port-of-Spain, be­fore a se­lect au­di­ence. The theme of the ad­dress was Mind Your Busi­ness.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, said: "This po­lit­i­cal per­for­mance is a bla­tant abuse of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars. He con­tin­ued to his usu­al di­a­tribe of 'Blame Kam­la, blame the UNC', for his in­abil­i­ty to man­age Trinidad and To­ba­go's af­fairs. It was a re­hashed rep­e­ti­tion of PNM's litany of ex­cus­es to cov­er their in­com­pe­tence, and Row­ley needs to tell the coun­try how much it cost us, the cit­i­zens, to put on his Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion.

"Row­ley not on­ly failed to ac­count to the peo­ple on what the Gov­ern­ment has ac­tu­al­ly done but three and a half years lat­er he has noth­ing to show, even af­ter spend­ing more in three years than my Gov­ern­ment did in five years.

"What is now clear is this Gov­ern­ment is in­tent on de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go about the true state of our eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. The re­cent Cen­tral Bank re­port in­di­cates 2019 will be a tough year, as the econ­o­my is slow­ing down. Where is the Fi­nance Min­is­ter's tout­ed turn­around?

"A re­port by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank shows that out of 27 coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Trinidad and To­ba­go placed third-to-last in an as­sess­ment of its per-capi­ta gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) per­for­mance in 2018. This means the av­er­age Trin­bag­on­ian is worse off now than they were 11 years ago in 2007. These find­ings con­firm what the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has been say­ing: that this Gov­ern­ment, led by Dr Kei­th Row­ley, has no idea how to gov­ern, and what is worse, has no plan for a re­turn to growth and pros­per­i­ty.

"Where was his plan for rais­ing rev­enue, for job cre­ation, to make cit­i­zens feel safer? It was clear from his graphs Row­ley's ad­min­is­tra­tion crashed the econ­o­my. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, one graph­ic showed $0.5 bil­lion high­er ex­pen­di­ture than rev­enue in 2019 com­pared to 2015.

"We don't ex­pect any­thing from part two of the show. The Prime Min­is­ter should have spent his time fo­cus­ing on vi­able so­lu­tions and a plan to move the coun­try for­ward. Trinidad and To­ba­go has long lost con­fi­dence in the PNM and is cry­ing out for a re­turn to sound lead­er­ship and good gov­er­nance" she said, adding the UNC has the vi­sion, ex­pe­ri­ence and will to build a brighter fu­ture.

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber Gabriel Faria said the in­for­ma­tion pro­duced gave some his­tor­i­cal con­text" which made it eas­i­er to un­der­stand the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, we look for­ward to the sec­ond seg­ment where we ex­pect the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­vide more de­tails on the plans go­ing for­ward,"

OW­TU's Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search Of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick said: "The Prime Min­is­ter's ad­dress on Sun­day shows clear­ly that Gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go hasn't im­pact­ed pos­i­tive­ly on the lives of or­di­nary peo­ple and that Gov­ern­ment is out of touch with cit­i­zens' pain and suf­fer­ing, be­cause if you can spend two hours as the Prime Min­is­ter did wast­ing time to talk about who wast­ed bil­lions and who bor­rowed what be­fore elec­tions, then you don't know what's re­al­ly go­ing on on the ground in Trinidad and To­ba­go. His ad­dress wouldn't have reached the or­di­nary per­son.

"His claim that the Gov­ern­ment lift­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go out of a hole is fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion that they don't un­der­stand what peo­ple are fac­ing and will face ahead since the close of Petrotrin. The new com­pa­nies re­sult­ing from that have put the south­ern econ­o­my in a huge hole which will soon have rip­ple ef­fects in putting the na­tion­al econ­o­my in a big­ger hole.

"Brain drain is al­ready tak­ing place. We have in­for­ma­tion from for­mer Petrotrin work­ers that many are leav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as they're not get­ting jobs, so Trinidad and To­ba­go's econ­o­my and oth­er sec­tors will be with­out their con­tri­bu­tion. How will that lift Trinidad and To­ba­go?"

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) po­lit­i­cal leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said Row­ley's ad­dress was "heavy on graphs and short on de­tails."

She said: "We await the sec­ond part but my main con­cern is if it was a PR ex­er­cise—and we need to know the cost—to tell Trinidad and To­ba­go how many bil­lions you're spend­ing on projects in 2019 and launch­ing a cam­paign. Isn't that the same thing he's ac­cus­ing the PP of? If he's bring­ing mega-projects now since the elec­tion bell has rung you end up with wastage.

"He should al­so apol­o­gise to To­bag­o­ni­ans for mock­ing their lan­guage when he spoke of the fer­ry com­plaints in an ac­cent. Al­so, why wasn't his pre­sen­ta­tion done in Par­lia­ment which he wouldn't have had to pay for and where ques­tions and de­bate can be done. The ex­ec­u­tive can't ap­prove such big ex­pen­di­ture on its own. While I sup­port the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project, we're yet to get in­vest­ment de­tails on this and why isn't it be­ing done in pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship rather than us­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey alone? Same for the Drag­on Field plan."

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said: "Clear­ly the event launched the PNM's elec­tion cam­paign since Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan re­cent­ly said 2019 is an elec­tion year. But I'm won­der­ing when ex­act­ly Sun­day's event was staged? Who were the in­vi­tees present the Prime Min­is­ter ad­dressed? Was it a PNM par­ty event and most im­por­tant­ly, who paid for that event?"

For­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas said he is await­ing part two of the ad­dress and couldn't com­ment on on­ly part one since he want­ed any com­ment to be based on a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment.