JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

Imbert: E-identity system to monitor most vulnerable

by

1735 days ago
20201024
Finance Minister Colm Imbert moves the second reading of the Appropriation (Financial Year 2021) Bill, 2020, during yesterday’s Senate sitting.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert moves the second reading of the Appropriation (Financial Year 2021) Bill, 2020, during yesterday’s Senate sitting.

T&T Parliament

An elec­tron­ic reg­is­ter or e-iden­ti­ty is be­ing cre­at­ed for every cit­i­zen to fa­cil­i­tate da­ta trans­mis­sion to all agen­cies. And an elec­tron­ic card sys­tem is al­so be­ing de­vel­oped to keep track of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said so dur­ing yes­ter­day’s 2021 Bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate.

He said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic “has brought with it a par­a­digm shift which has nev­er been seen be­fore in our life­time.”

He said this was why Gov­ern­ment was in­vest­ing in digi­ti­sa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy, to­geth­er with a re­newed thrust in im­prov­ing ease of do­ing busi­ness.

“We ex­pect this ini­tia­tive to stream­line process­es, pro­mote ef­fi­cien­cy and elim­i­nate waste and du­pli­ca­tion,” Im­bert said.

Al­so pro­posed is an e-Gov­er­nance ecosys­tem which will in­clude a new gov­ern­ment ser­vice de­liv­ery mod­el al­low­ing for pass­ports, dri­vers’ per­mits, tax re­turns, busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion, so­cial grants and li­cens­ing arrange­ments trans­ac­tions.

A new au­to­mat­ed con­struc­tion sys­tem known as the De­vel­opTT Au­to­mat­ed Con­struc­tion Sys­tem will be de­vel­oped to ex­pe­dite gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with build­ing con­struc­tion.

Im­bert said a data­base is al­so be­ing built to iden­ti­fy the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety so their needs be­come pri­or­i­ty.

“We’ll pri­ori­tise de­vel­op­ment of an In­te­grat­ed Com­mu­ni­ty First Re­spon­ders Sys­tem which will iden­ti­fy those house­holds head­ed by sin­gle par­ents, the el­der­ly and old­er sib­lings; vul­ner­a­ble per­sons who live alone; those who care for per­sons with men­tal health chal­lenges and shel­ters for dis­placed women, chil­dren and men,” Im­bert said.

“To im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, a Na­tion­al So­cial Ser­vices e-Card Sys­tem will be in­tro­duced to track vul­ner­a­ble per­sons and fam­i­lies, mod­ernise the de­liv­ery of so­cial sup­port pro­grammes, en­cour­age the use of lo­cal­ly-pro­duced goods and de­vel­op a reg­is­ter of agen­cies and in­di­vid­u­als sup­port­ive of the vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion.

“This card will min­imise abuse and dou­ble-dip­ping with­in the so­cial ser­vices sec­tor and en­sure that those who re­al­ly re­quire as­sis­tance ac­tu­al­ly re­ceive it.”

He said a com­mit­ment was giv­en to es­tab­lish the much-need­ed T&T Po­lice Ser­vice med­ical fa­cil­i­ty pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal care to of­fi­cers on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Im­bert al­so warned,”We must con­front the fact that we can no longer af­ford as a coun­try to sub­sidise WASA to the tune of over $2 bil­lion per year. “

He added, “As part of our in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing agen­da, we’ll be as­sess­ing the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem to en­sure we can con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing cit­i­zens with pen­sion se­cu­ri­ty. In this con­text, to ad­dress the short­fall be­tween ex­pen­di­ture on ben­e­fits and in­come, the fea­si­bil­i­ty of ex­tend­ing the re­tire­ment age to 65 will be ex­am­ined.”

Im­bert said all gas sta­tions owned by NP “will be of­fered for sale to the pri­vate sec­tor, with first pref­er­ence giv­en to ex­ist­ing deal­ers and con­ces­sion­aires.”

He al­so warned, “If the price of oil re­cov­ers, the price of gaso­line and diesel will nat­u­ral­ly in­crease pro­por­tion­ate­ly.”

A Work­force Re­cov­ery Pro­gramme ad­min­is­tered by YTEPP will pro­vide 4,000 cours­es and 400 spe­cial­i­sa­tions to youths and the un­em­ployed, un­der­em­ployed, re­trenched, or dis­placed work­ers to de­vel­op skills to en­ter the labour mar­ket, he said.

He said Gov­ern­ment was al­so still en­gaged in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Pa­tri­ot­ic Tech­nolo­gies for the sale of the Guaracara re­fin­ery “... and bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, hoped to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly con­clude a sale and pur­chase agree­ment for the re­fin­ery by the end of this month.”

Apart from what was giv­en to To­ba­go, he added, “We’re in ac­tive dis­cus­sions with the THA to see what else can be done to as­sist To­ba­go busi­ness­es/To­bag­o­ni­ans in gen­er­al.”

Gov­ern­ment’s hous­ing pro­gramme will al­so gen­er­ate 20,000 jobs an­nu­al­ly.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored