RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s lengthy Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion drew mixed re­ac­tions from cit­i­zens, rang­ing from de­ri­sion to sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly for in­ti­atves an­nounced in ed­u­ca­tion, se­cu­ri­ty, and agri­cul­ture.

On Low­er High Street, San Fer­nan­do, em­ploy­ees of Courts lis­tened with keen in­ter­est, hop­ing to hear an­nounce­ments of an in­crease in the min­i­mum wage and en­hanced pen­sion ben­e­fits. How­ev­er, as Im­bert’s speech went on at length, their en­thu­si­asm waned and they re­turned to work du­ties.

One em­ploy­ee, Lis­ton Ramkisson, com­ment­ed: “This is the PNM, any­thing could take place. Noth­ing good is hap­pen­ing. It’s on­ly talk they talk, and they don’t walk the walk.”

He ex­pressed con­cern about the im­pend­ing prop­er­ty tax and asked why lap­tops were be­ing dis­trib­uted to on­ly 94 schools.

“We have more schools than that! Do it in all schools,” Ramkisson urged.

He said many work­ers did not wanr to see the re­tire­ment age in­creased to 65.

“Peo­ple look for­ward to re­tir­ing at 60, and now they’re say­ing we have to wait un­til we are 65? No way! That we will ri­ot for!” he de­clared.

Pen­sion­er Arthur Samp­son ex­pressed his dis­may at the rein­tro­duc­tion of prop­er­ty tax next year.

“The prop­er­ty tax doesn’t make sense. Let it be like back in the days when there was no prop­er­ty at. Let peo­ple live,” he said.

How­ev­er, he was of the opin­ion that peo­ple who worked con­sis­tent­ly should wel­come a lat­er re­tire­ment age, adding: “This gov­ern­ment is giv­ing no as­sis­tance to the poor so why peo­ple should pay more tax­es.”

Ke­shan Ko­la­hal ques­tioned the ac­cu­ra­cy of the re­port­ed un­em­ploy­ment rate: “I do not be­lieve that the un­em­ploy­ment rate is just 3.7 per cent. That is not true. In my com­mu­ni­ty alone, we have many peo­ple look­ing for work.”

He called for the de­fer­ral of the prop­er­ty tax and said the Gov­ern­ment should be mind­ful of the chal­lenges faced by the pop­u­lace.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al par­ents ex­pressed their sup­port for the pro­posed $1,000 book and uni­form grant.

Pe­tra Boodoo said: “I think it is a very thought­ful ini­tia­tive. A lot of par­ents can’t af­ford to buy all their chil­dren books for school. Every year the book list changes, so there is no way they can pass the books down from one child to the oth­er. I to­tal­ly sup­port the book grant be­cause it will al­so as­sist and pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for all chil­dren to at­tend school. This will elim­i­nate the to­tal amount of school drop-outs to the min­i­mal.”

Regi­na Fe­lang­ie, a teacher and par­ent, ex­pressed reser­va­tions about the stan­dard­iza­tion of text books, ar­gu­ing that stu­dents learn dif­fer­ent­ly, and some text­books are more ad­vanced than oth­ers.

Caris­sa Nanan won­dered about the cri­te­ria for iden­ti­fy­ing un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren who would qual­i­fy for the grant and the means test that would be used.

Con­cern­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the an­nounce­ment that 1,000 po­lice re­cruits will be hired an­nu­al­ly to com­bat crime al­so elicit­ed mixed re­ac­tions. Adesh Singh, wh­po is from Wood­land, an area af­fect­ed by lar­ce­ny and home in­va­sions, said the po­lice force need­ed mod­ern­iza­tion and up­dat­ed train­ing meth­ods. He cau­tioned that mere­ly hir­ing more po­lice with­out im­prov­ing their tech­niques could lead to crim­i­nals gain­ing ad­vanced in­for­ma­tion from with­in the ranks.

Son­ny­lal Sookoo echoed those sen­ti­ments, em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of in­tel­li­gence and prop­er train­ing in crime-solv­ing, while­Tara Jaglal ex­pressed con­cerns about in­di­vid­u­als en­ter­ing the po­lice force with ul­te­ri­or mo­tives and po­ten­tial­ly en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.