Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is pledg­ing to cre­ate a “ba­by trust fund” as To­ba­go bat­tles an alarm­ing drop in births.

But econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James says the an­nounce­ment is emp­ty, un­de­vel­oped and ir­re­spon­si­ble. He said no Gov­ern­ment should float a plan like this with­out ev­i­dence, re­search or a sin­gle con­crete de­tail.

Speak­ing dur­ing a meet­ing in Belle Gar­den on Wednes­day night, Au­gus­tine told sup­port­ers, “We are propos­ing that for every per­son born in To­ba­go… we will put in­to a trust fund some monies for you that you can on­ly draw down on from the age of 21.”

He said To­ba­go once record­ed close to 1,000 births a year but now sees few­er than half of that.

“We move from be­tween 900 and 1,000 births per year… we now have just over 400 births per year on the is­land. That is not a recipe for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and growth,” Au­gus­tine said.

He warned that the de­cline has long-term con­se­quences for the is­land’s work­force and fu­ture sta­bil­i­ty but hopes the trust fund ini­tia­tive will re­verse this.

“Once you are To­bag­on­ian born, you know that this gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to make an in­vest­ment in­to your fu­ture.”

He added that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is en­gag­ing ac­tu­ar­ies and in­sur­ance ex­perts to help de­sign the fund, which will al­low chil­dren to ac­cess mon­ey when they come of age to do so. He did not say how much each child would re­ceive or how the fund would be fi­nanced.

How­ev­er, in jus­ti­fy­ing it, he said the is­land doesn’t have enough peo­ple and some­thing has to be done.

Au­gus­tine framed the pro­pos­al as part of a wider ef­fort to sup­port fam­i­lies and help fu­ture gen­er­a­tions start out with a fi­nan­cial safe­ty net. He linked it to the broad­er chal­lenges fac­ing To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the de­cline in the pop­u­la­tion and the need to strength­en com­mu­ni­ty sup­port sys­tems.

Loose talk with­out sta­tis­tics, says econ­o­mist

But Dr Vanus James yes­ter­day said the an­nounce­ment lacks the most ba­sic ground­work.

In a Zoom in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last evening, he said the Chief Sec­re­tary did not ex­plain what the trust fund is meant to achieve, how much mon­ey would be set aside, or whether the is­land can af­ford it.

“If you don’t know why they’re not hav­ing more ba­bies in the first place, that’s just loose po­lit­i­cal old talk,” he said. “If the in­tent is to en­cour­age peo­ple to have more ba­bies, you’ve got to know why they’re not hav­ing more ba­bies now in the first place. That re­quires care­ful, deep re­search.”

James said it is im­pos­si­ble to de­sign a cred­i­ble long-term fund with­out un­der­stand­ing the root caus­es of the de­clin­ing birth rate. He warned that To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, job prospects and liv­ing stan­dards have a di­rect im­pact on whether fam­i­lies feel ready to have chil­dren.

“These are fam­i­lies you are talk­ing about,” he said. “You’re not just en­cour­ag­ing women to go and have ba­bies, you’re talk­ing about de­vel­op­ing fam­i­lies and the is­sue ul­ti­mate­ly that fam­i­lies will have to con­front in car­ing for chil­dren is the growth of their ca­pac­i­ty to earn and meet the com­mit­ments to raise the chil­dren un­til the fun could be ac­cessed.”

He asked, “What hap­pens to these chil­dren be­tween the age of ze­ro and 21? Fam­i­lies have to raise them.”

He said To­ba­go’s on­go­ing brain drain al­so needs to be con­sid­ered. Many young To­bag­o­ni­ans pur­sue de­grees and then leave the is­land be­cause they can­not se­cure long-term work or sta­ble ca­reers at home, he not­ed.

“If you’re not think­ing through liv­ing stan­dards, what you’re do­ing re­al­ly is rais­ing a child who is like­ly to be so dam­aged by the time they get to 21, that they ul­ti­mate­ly find the best thing for them to do is to pack their bags, take the mon­ey ac­cu­mu­lat­ed and leave the is­land,” James said.

James al­so ques­tioned whether To­ba­go has the fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty to cre­ate a fund of this kind. He said the THA has not pro­vid­ed any in­for­ma­tion on cost, in­vest­ment plans or long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“Be­fore you get in­to all of this kind of loose think­ing, you need to sit down and do care­ful think­ing about how To­ba­go could pay for all of these kinds of schemes,” he said.

He added that To­ba­go re­lies heav­i­ly on cen­tral gov­ern­ment trans­fers and can­not take on new fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments with­out strength­en­ing its econ­o­my first.

He be­lieves To­ba­go must fo­cus on build­ing a vi­able eco­nom­ic base, im­prov­ing job op­por­tu­ni­ties, and rais­ing liv­ing stan­dards if it wants fam­i­lies to feel con­fi­dent enough to grow and re­pro­duce. With­out that, he says, a trust fund can­not achieve its stat­ed goal.

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty has re­cent­ly rolled out a ba­by box pro­gramme that pro­vides every moth­er with es­sen­tial sup­plies for their new­borns. The ba­by trust fund would be a sep­a­rate ini­tia­tive, but with no de­tails yet re­leased, James said he is now wait­ing to see how the plan will be struc­tured and whether it can re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be de­liv­ered af­ter the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tion.