Gail Alexan­der

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.