Bil­lions of dol­lars are be­ing spent in To­ba­go every year, but we are not see­ing the de­vel­op­ment to go with it, the first chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Ho­choy Charles has lament­ed.

“Bil­lions of dol­lars they have in To­ba­go but you’re not see­ing where this mon­ey is be­ing spent to de­vel­op our peo­ple. You don’t know where the mon­ey is be­ing spent so some­thing is wrong,” Charles told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“They are mak­ing a lot of blun­ders,” Charles said.

But what are the rea­son for these blun­ders?

Well, ac­cord­ing to Charles, who was the THA’s chief sec­re­tary from 1996 to 2001, it is has a lot to do with “ig­no­rance”.

“A lot of peo­ple do not un­der­stand the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act. It is a lot of ig­no­rance,” he said.

Charles said that ig­no­rance even ex­tends to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice.

Suc­ces­sive au­di­tor gen­er­al re­ports have raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about the way in which pu­bic funds are be­ing ac­count­ed for by the THA.

“The THA is not a gov­ern­ment de­part­ment it repli­cates the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad, the House of As­sem­bly is like the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and un­der the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad, no­tice I said in Trinidad and not of Trinidad be­cause we have one gov­ern­ment of T&T as you know,” Charles said.

Charles said mon­ey ap­proved for the THA in the na­tion­al bud­get is sent to the THA Fund in quar­ter­ly tranch­es.

The THA Fund is cre­at­ed by Sec­tion 141 of the con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and in­cludes all rev­enue raised for To­ba­go in­clu­sive of the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion.

“So some­times when the staff in Trinidad are ex­am­in­ing the ac­counts of the THA they ex­am­ine it as though they are deal­ing with a min­istry and they take up the es­ti­mates and look­ing at it to say ‘you know the gov­ern­ment sent this mon­ey to To­ba­go how you spent this mon­ey?”. The As­sem­bly does not spend mon­ey like that,” Charles said.

“The ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil makes the de­ci­sion as to how the quar­ter­ly ad­vances are go­ing to be spent and then re­leas­es mon­ey just like the min­is­ter of fi­nance will sign a re­lease, re­lease these monies to a di­vi­sion,” he said.

Charles said the THA is not bound by the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion un­der the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act.

“You know we are not bound by the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions un­der the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act, we are bound by the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act but not by the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions. We have our reg­u­la­tions that we pre­pared un­der Sec­tion 52 of the THA Act and Sec­tion 78 of the THA Act and we are bound by those rules,” he said.

Charles said he be­lieves “ed­u­ca­tion” would help ad­dress the ig­no­rance with re­spect to the THA and its op­er­a­tions.

“The As­sem­bly makes a lot of blun­ders be­cause the peo­ple who are there for the last 20 years do not un­der­stand the THA,” Charles said.

Charles said even the longest serv­ing THA chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don was not as au courant about the THA Act as he should have been.

“I don’t even know what they do, they are do­ing a lot of stuff that they do not un­der­stand,” Charles said.

Charles said when he was THA chief sec­re­tary the bud­get that he had avail­able was around $300 mil­lion.

In the last na­tion­al bud­get the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to the THA was $2.283 bil­lion

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James said he be­lieves “ap­a­thy” from the ma­jor­i­ty of To­bag­o­ni­ans has helped fu­el the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and over­sight by the THA.

“The gov­ern­ment gets away with it be­cause of ap­a­thy in the pop­u­la­tion and be­cause of the weak po­lit­i­cal struc­tures we have here in To­ba­go,” James said.

James said this ap­a­thy has grown be­cause To­bag­o­ni­ans are de­pen­dent heav­i­ly on the THA.

Around 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in To­ba­go are em­ployed by the THA, James said.

“There is a lot of de­pen­dence men­tal and fi­nan­cial, and there is a lot ap­a­thy that goes with that be­cause peo­ple don’t want to rock the boat, and that’s a dan­ger to the na­tion,” he said.

“I mean 70 per cent of paid em­ploy­ees work­ing for the gov­ern­ment means To­ba­go is a wel­fare state,” James said.

James said there is on­ly a “small share” of To­bag­o­ni­ans who are up­set by the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“This is a sys­temic, struc­tur­al prob­lem and to fix it you have to change the na­ture of the THA as an in­sti­tu­tion and the na­ture of the po­lit­i­cal process in To­ba­go. The THA is sim­ply an ex­ec­u­tive body there is no leg­isla­tive over­sight in the THA, and so be­cause it is pure­ly an ex­ec­u­tive body the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil does what­ev­er it pleas­es and that with the con­nivance of the THA Act,” he said.

“The THA Act is all writ­ten for the chief sec­re­tary to do this, and the chief sec­re­tary to do that, and there is no over­sight mech­a­nism built in at all,” James said.

James said there is al­so an ab­sences of mech­a­nism for the pub­lic to use to rou­tine­ly in­form the THA how they see the sit­u­a­tion.

Change is need­ed, James said.

“We need sys­tem­at­ic change, struc­tur­al change of the de­sign of the THA and fur­ther to that they need to change the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem. Be­cause of the way the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil dom­i­nates To­ba­go now what you have is a THA that is too big and peo­ple are scared of it,” James said.

“To free them from that you have to make the THA way small­er in the em­ploy­ment of To­ba­go and you have to build a pri­vate sec­tor that is the bas­tion from which we can de­rive our free­dom,” he said.

James said 45 per cent of To­ba­go’s out­put is gov­ern­ment ser­vice while in Trinidad that stands at around 15 per cent.

“The THA has its knee on your neck, your back, your foot and you are not go­ing to get any ro­bust com­plaints about their per­for­mance in that con­text,” James said.

James said while the con­ver­sa­tion about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion con­tin­ues in this coun­try, To­ba­go needs to be the piv­ot of that.

“But that piv­ot­ing will not hap­pen with the THA de­signed as it is,” he said.