The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's (THA) de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate more than 1,000 work­ers em­ployed un­der its short-term pub­lic works pro­gramme rais­es se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial con­cerns that de­serve clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine first sig­nalled the move dur­ing the As­sem­bly's bud­get de­bate on June 25, when he re­quest­ed $4.12 bil­lion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to fi­nance To­ba­go's op­er­a­tions for fis­cal 2026-2027. Of that amount, $3.03 bil­lion was ear­marked for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and $1.09 bil­lion for cap­i­tal projects.

A cen­tral theme of Mr Au­gus­tine's pre­sen­ta­tion was the need to con­trol em­ploy­ment costs. He warned that the THA could not con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing its work­force in­def­i­nite­ly, not­ing that 3,146 em­ploy­ees had been hired be­tween Jan­u­ary 2022 and Jan­u­ary 2026. In that con­text, he an­nounced plans to end the "10-on, 10-off" pro­gramme, while in­di­cat­ing that some work­ers would be ab­sorbed in­to per­ma­nent po­si­tions.

The con­cern over ris­ing ex­pen­di­ture is un­der­stand­able. The THA does not yet know what al­lo­ca­tion it will re­ceive from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, and past fund­ing has var­ied sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Giv­en that un­cer­tain­ty, cau­tion in man­ag­ing re­cur­rent spend­ing is pru­dent.

What is less cer­tain is whether ter­mi­nat­ing more than 1,000 work­ers is the best ap­proach.

To­ba­go's em­ployed work­force is es­ti­mat­ed at be­tween 15,000 and 20,000 peo­ple. Re­mov­ing such a large num­ber of in­come earn­ers from the labour mar­ket, even tem­porar­i­ly, is like­ly to re­duce con­sumer spend­ing across the is­land. Re­tail­ers, su­per­mar­kets, hard­ware stores, restau­rants and oth­er busi­ness­es could all feel the im­pact.

Mr Au­gus­tine has in­di­cat­ed that some af­fect­ed work­ers may be re­hired. On Wednes­day, he crit­i­cised the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture for fail­ing to pro­vide an up­dat­ed va­can­cy list, not­ing that a pre­vi­ous as­sess­ment iden­ti­fied near­ly 700 va­cant po­si­tions with­in the di­vi­sion. It is rea­son­able to as­sume that many dis­placed work­ers could fill those posts.

How­ev­er, sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions re­main. How quick­ly will those va­can­cies be filled? How many of the ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers will be re­hired? What pro­vi­sions are be­ing made for those who will not se­cure per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment?

There is al­so a long-term fi­nan­cial con­sid­er­a­tion. While con­vert­ing tem­po­rary jobs in­to per­ma­nent po­si­tions may im­prove job se­cu­ri­ty, it al­so in­creas­es em­ploy­ment costs. Per­ma­nent work­ers are en­ti­tled to ben­e­fits such as paid va­ca­tion leave, sick leave, ma­ter­ni­ty leave, over­time and em­ploy­er Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions. Any short-term sav­ings could there­fore trans­late in­to high­er costs over time.

The THA's fis­cal chal­lenges are re­al, and re­spon­si­ble man­age­ment of pub­lic fi­nances is es­sen­tial. Nev­er­the­less, de­ci­sions af­fect­ing more than 1,000 work­ers and their fam­i­lies should be sup­port­ed by clear plan­ning, mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion and trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Un­til there is greater clar­i­ty on the tran­si­tion process and the fate of af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees, the THA's de­ci­sion will con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate le­git­i­mate con­cern. A more mea­sured ap­proach may have bet­ter bal­anced fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with To­ba­go's eco­nom­ic and so­cial re­al­i­ties.