Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent 

As the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) pre­pares to de­liv­er its an­nu­al bud­get to­day—its last be­fore the as­sem­bly’s term ex­pires, mak­ing way for the next elec­tion—stake­hold­ers are mak­ing ur­gent calls for the as­sem­bly to see to its debts, de­mand its right­ful al­lo­ca­tion and fi­nal­ly de­liv­er on three-year-old promis­es.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James be­lieves To­ba­go’s econ­o­my has al­ready col­lapsed, and says the as­sem­bly must use this bud­get to set a new di­rec­tion, not re­peat the same mis­takes.

“This was four wast­ed years… I can­not think of any pri­or­i­ties that this Gov­ern­ment should rush to get put in place now. The fun­da­men­tal thing you have to do is re­form the THA Act and get the au­ton­o­my process in place,” James said.

He warned that con­tin­u­ing with­out struc­tur­al re­form is dan­ger­ous for both is­lands.

“If the THA does not de­mand prop­er con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, Trinidad and To­ba­go will nev­er di­ver­si­fy—and To­ba­go will nev­er de­vel­op,” he said.

Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean agrees the bud­get needs to be bold, adding the THA must fi­nal­ly in­vest heav­i­ly in the is­land’s main in­come dri­ver.

“About a bil­lion dol­lars to get tourism to where it needs to and to show peo­ple that To­ba­go is a promi­nent force on the mar­ket. A bil­lion dol­lars. Sounds like a lot of mon­ey, and it is a lot of mon­ey,” MacLean said.

“But at the end of the day, you have to in­vest a lot to get tourism go­ing, where tourism be­comes the fu­el of the fu­ture.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce To­ba­go Di­vi­sion chair­man Cur­tis Williams wants the THA to pri­ori­tise debt re­pay­ment and give re­al sup­port to busi­ness­es still strug­gling since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Well, as we can see, we men­tioned one of the biggest fo­cus is to treat with some of their li­a­bil­i­ties,” Williams said.

“That’s a crit­i­cal is­sue… some of the To­ba­go busi­ness­es haven’t come out of the COVID sce­nario, and I think that that THA loan guar­an­tee fund may as­sist them in get­ting their work­ing cap­i­tal and mov­ing their busi­ness for­ward,” he added in re­la­tion to the re­cent­ly launched fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance pro­gramme for busi­ness­es.

He al­so called for stronger busi­ness ed­u­ca­tion and trans­paren­cy.

“We have to get a vi­brant busi­ness sec­tor go­ing … we’re look­ing to even ed­u­cate the busi­ness­peo­ple. Your ac­count­ing must be a must. Cor­po­rate gov­er­nance must be a must. And some of the busi­ness­es in To­ba­go lack­ing those sim­ple facts.”

From the fish­ing sec­tor, All-To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas said the THA must clear debts owed to con­trac­tors from last year’s oil spill and ful­fil its long-stand­ing promis­es to fish­er­folk.

“I hope to be­lieve that good sense would pre­vail, and they would pay off the con­trac­tors that would have worked se­ri­ous­ly on the oil spill… and oth­er con­trac­tors that was owed,” Dou­glas said.

“I would see where the THA will ho­n­our the promise and the com­mit­ment they would have made to the fish­ing in­dus­try, es­pe­cial­ly to the fish­er­folk, by help­ing us to grad­u­ate, to help us to get us that boat and that can fac­to­ry. So that we can be able to con­tribute more to the food se­cu­ri­ty on the is­land of To­ba­go and Trinidad.”

How­ev­er, he warned, “The mon­ey must be ac­count­ed for, for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go.”

In ed­u­ca­tion, TTUTA’s To­ba­go of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts is urg­ing the THA to ask for every­thing To­ba­go needs—and stand up to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

“Well, I would trust that the THA will ask for all that it needs. I am not one to be hes­i­tant in my de­mands, and the THA should have that sim­i­lar strength,” Roberts said. “We need to ask for the max­i­mum, as the THA owes a lot of peo­ple.”

He point­ed to un­paid teach­ers and schools in poor con­di­tion.

“We have our con­tract teach­ers that are owed ten-plus mil­lion dol­lars,” he said.

“There are schools where the in­fra­struc­tur­al work, we are try­ing our best to keep the schools func­tion­ing, with teach­ers not do­ing re­fusals to work with the poor con­di­tions.”

Roberts said To­ba­go must stop beg­ging and start de­mand­ing.

“We don’t want to hear that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter is say­ing things tough now, so we have to curb what we ask­ing... They need to be pre­pared for the fights and to make sure you jus­ti­fy your re­quest—that’s all I can ask of a THA re­gard­ing their bud­getary pre­sen­ta­tion.”