Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Ali­cia Pauline Lalite-Et­ti­enne has crit­i­cised the 2026 Bud­get, de­scrib­ing it as one that claims to be peo­ple-cen­tred but which will, in re­al­i­ty, in­crease the cost of liv­ing for the most fi­nan­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble.

The sen­a­tor al­so hit back at a hous­ing mea­sure be­ing pro­posed by the state for dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple.

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Lalite-Et­tiene, the coun­try’s first vi­su­al­ly im­paired sen­a­tor, said, “Now this bud­get, I could align it with a Christ­mas tree. It has a lot of glit­ter, plen­ty glit­ter, that even the blind could see. How­ev­er, not every­thing that glit­ters is gold.”

Lalite-Et­tiene said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s bud­get con­tri­bu­tion was filled with a lot of “catch­words”.

“Words that des­per­ate peo­ple would long to hear and are hap­py to hear,” she said.

How­ev­er, the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor said, the poli­cies out­lined would lead to a high­er cost of liv­ing.

“Don’t mat­ter if you want to put a glit­ter of Christ­mas tree lights on it. Cost of liv­ing is go­ing up. And for ex­am­ple, a dol­lar of su­per, yes. I view this as a dis­trac­tion car­rot to the main meat of the mat­ter, all right. If things are go­ing to be tough, say it from the be­gin­ning,” the sen­a­tor said.

She added, “When they go to the pump, they’re pay­ing $50 less. But when you in­crease tax­es, what hap­pens? There is a triple ef­fect. When peo­ple have to im­port goods, and these com­pa­nies have to pay to clear the con­tain­ers, who do you think it’s go­ing to be trick­led off to?”

Lalite-Et­ti­enne al­so crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment for the mas­sive lay-offs from pro­grammes such as the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

“In­stead of wean­ing them off a bro­ken sys­tem, they were im­me­di­ate­ly slashed. How are you go­ing to feel that you’re work­ing, you have chil­dren, you have your bills, and in a blink of an eye, you have noth­ing. Chil­dren watch­ing you. Wifey watch­ing you. What next? Many peo­ple are home­less be­cause of this,” the sen­a­tor lament­ed.

Lalite-Et­ti­enne al­so weighed in on the pro­posed Land­lord Sur­charge tax and the Elec­tric­i­ty Sur­charge, which is ap­plic­a­ble to com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor said no busi­ness or prop­er­ty own­er was go­ing to ab­sorb those ad­di­tion­al costs that would cut in­to their prof­its.

“So when you raise var­i­ous tax­es, dif­fer­ent tax­es, and this is where we will in­crease rev­enue, and we are go­ing to get more mon­ey to pay our debts and stuff like that, you know who is go­ing to feel it? The poor, the vul­ner­a­ble, the per­son who is on grants, be­cause the grant is not go­ing up, the pen­sion is not go­ing up, and the salaries peo­ple are get­ting are not go­ing up,” she posit­ed.

Lalite-Et­tiene added, “So when peo­ple think they’re sav­ing $50 a pump, that’s why I say that’s a dis­trac­tion car­rot, be­cause you have to go and spend it back, right back.”

Fo­cus­ing on the dif­fer­ent­ly abled pop­u­la­tion, the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor took great um­brage with a pro­posed plan to al­lo­cate hous­ing for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in Ed­in­burgh 500. She asked the State if they were try­ing to make a “dis­abil­i­ty dis­trict”.

“Why per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties should on­ly be thrown in Ed­in­burgh 500? So if they want to come to Port of Spain, they’re on a dis­abil­i­ty ground, they have to pay three means of trans­porta­tion or wait for the bus. Why we can­not live in one of those units in D’abadie, in Cou­va, in Ari­ma, in St. James, in Mal­oney, in any oth­er, in any oth­er hous­ing de­vel­op­ments?”

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor said dif­fer­ent­ly abled peo­ple were not plague-rid­den and should not be made to feel as if they were be­ing quar­an­tined.