Renu­ka Singh

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots deputy leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has once again raised the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion’s failed 2.5 mil­lion zi­pline project, say­ing it re­mains as ex­am­ple of poor pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

Speak­ing at the par­ty’s meet­ing at Sig­nal Hill/Pa­tience Hill meet­ing on Tues­day night, Au­gus­tine said once elect­ed, the PDP plans to re­in­state the “gut­ted” pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion that cur­rent­ly re­moves ac­count­abil­i­ty from To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fi­cials.

“We must be­come the best prac­tice and the best stan­dard of how to man­age projects,” he said.

He said that the dis­ap­peared zi­pline was the “de­f­i­n­i­tion of obeah.”

“I don’t know what else that could be,” he said.

“That is a se­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ing act, I don’t know how else to ex­plain that.

“When things like this hap­pen over and over and over again, there are peo­ple in our so­ci­ety that are vul­ner­a­ble who lose.”

He said the wastage of mon­ey by the di­vi­sion meant that peo­ple could not get the hand­outs that they need­ed for books, tablets and in­ter­net con­nec­tion.

“There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty cost to that kind of mad­ness and we have to ask our­selves whether we want to con­tin­ue down that road,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said that he loved To­ba­go more than he loved the PDP and af­ter the De­cem­ber 6 elec­tions, if the PDP won, he promised his ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil would not op­er­ate like the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment did.

“If we pass bud­gets for projects, the projects bet­ter be de­liv­ered and if you are in­ca­pable of man­ag­ing a di­vi­sion to de­liv­er projects with­in time­ly and rea­son­able bud­get, then you are in­ca­pable of run­ning any di­vi­sion and in­ca­pable of run­ning this is­land. It is as sim­ple as that,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­mind­ed To­ba­go that it on­ly con­tributed $200 mil­lion to their own man­age­ment and that the cost of run­ning the coun­try was much more than that.

“And we have a sim­ple project, a zi­pline project is no mas­sive, sci­en­tif­ic won­der of the world, that’s a sim­ple project..what wrong with we?” he said.

He said un­der the PNM, a sim­ple project like that was not com­plet­ed.

“And that is symp­to­matic of how we man­age our af­fairs as an is­land. It is in­dica­tive of the kind of deep-root­ed­ness of the cor­rup­tion in this place,” he said.

He said it was up to the PDP to res­cue To­ba­go.

He al­so ac­cused THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis of mis­man­age­ment of funds.

“We are not no Op­po­si­tion, we ain’t lose no elec­tion and be­cause it have no op­po­si­tion on the is­land, what we should have had was pru­dent re­straint,” Au­gus­tine said.

“Where the pru­dent re­straint now? Fis­cal year just start and we spend­ing like crazy, it must be whol­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble to spend in that man­ner.”

He de­scribed the spend­ing as “vul­gar and dis­re­spect­ful to To­bag­o­ni­ans.”

“We might get in­to of­fice and find that they done waste away all of our bud­get but God for­bid they win, what they go do for the rest of the year?” he asked.

Au­gus­tine asked about the funds for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment for the rest of the fis­cal year.

“We have mon­ey to pave roads in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly,” he said, adding there was an even­tu­al cost to that wastage.

He said added to the fact that To­ba­go does not get enough mon­ey for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, there was the is­sue of mis­man­age­ment and wastage.

“They have been mis­man­ag­ing our mon­ey and we have been just idle by­standers just sit­ting down, watch­ing them,” he said.