KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though the cur­rent To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has re­ceived the high­est bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of all ad­min­is­tra­tions in pow­er on the is­land, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Lau­rence His­lop says there has been no sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment to show for it.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 Bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, His­lop said each THA ad­min­is­tra­tion had re­ceived al­most the same lev­el of fund­ing from the Na­tion­al Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion and car­ried out work with the sums.

He said pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-led ad­min­is­tra­tions man­aged to do sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment on the is­land with sim­i­lar or less fund­ing, with da­ta show­ing that from 2001-2021, the na­tion­al al­lo­ca­tions were around 3.9, 4.0 and 4.3 per cent on the bud­gets.

He said To­ba­go has more fa­cil­i­ties per capi­ta than most Caribbean coun­tries.

He boast­ed that the PNM-led THA built the Cove Eco-In­dus­tri­al and Busi­ness Park, which could be in­stru­men­tal to To­ba­go’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion; up­grad­ed the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex and de­liv­ered projects, in­clud­ing util­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture, schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, and health cen­tres.

“Since this THA ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice in 2021, they have re­ceived net in­creas­es year on year, more than any oth­er pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, and for the two years, the 22 months around that they have been there, we have not seen any sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment on the is­land. The draft es­ti­mate of the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme shows that the As­sem­bly is re­ceiv­ing the al­lo­ca­tion, but we are not see­ing the equiv­a­lent work be­ing done on the is­land.”

His­lop ac­knowl­edged Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s state­ment that To­ba­go re­ceived 100 per cent of its al­lo­ca­tion from the PNM Gov­ern­ment. He called on the THA to use its in­creased al­lo­ca­tion to ben­e­fit To­bag­o­ni­ans. He said the THA is the on­ly en­ti­ty with­in T&T’s gov­er­nance that can re­al­lo­cate as it sees fit, mean­ing it can move funds from its re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture to its de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gramme.

“We have an ad­min­is­tra­tion that spent $1.2 mil­lion on a stage in the sea, has in­creased its trav­el, and when you ask the ad­min­is­tra­tion about ac­count­ing for the ex­pens­es, they tell you that you are not part of the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil,” he said.

His­lop said the Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School was falling in­to the sea, but the THA had not an­nounced its plans to deal with the sit­u­a­tion. He said a new school was a project un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, which found a site and had a fund­ing arrange­ment with the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank for $250 mil­lion.

“Mr Pres­i­dent, we have heard noth­ing of it in the last 22 months about Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School. In the mean­time, the school is falling in­to the sea.”

His­lop said THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had told at­ten­dees at a town hall meet­ing that the As­sem­bly had less mon­ey to pave roads. How­ev­er, he said the THA re­ceived $400 mil­lion in fis­cal 2023 for de­vel­op­men­tal work. It in­clud­ed $300 mil­lion from the Na­tion­al Bud­get and $100 mil­lion fol­low­ing the Midyear Re­view for road re­pairs.

“The sad part is that we have not seen any of that $100 mil­lion be­ing spent on the re­pair of roads. That is the sit­u­a­tion we face. As I said, out of the $400 mil­lion, $1.3 mil­lion was used to build a stage, nine­teen mil­lion was spent on a road that ex­perts say could have been done for $7 mil­lion, and $65 mil­lion was com­mit­ted to build a road that the Min­istry of Works was will­ing to build to the new air­port in an arrange­ment they had with PURE.”

His­lop said the THA down­grad­ed the project from a dual car­riage­way to a sin­gle-lane road for $65 mil­lion, but con­struc­tion was halt­ed be­cause of an is­sue with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.