Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man David Lee is ask­ing why the Gov­ern­ment is rush­ing to amend the Cen­tral Bank Act over the week­end to al­low the re­lease of new poly­mer $100 bills on the mar­ket and the re­moval of the old cot­ton-based blue note.

Lee, in a text ex­change with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, said Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to “de­flect” from the UNC vic­to­ry at the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls on Mon­day. He said the Gov­ern­ment used stand­ing or­der 64(1) B, which dis­pensed with giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion no­tice, to de­bate this bill.

“Why the rush?” Lee asked.

“This is an­oth­er high-hand­ed ap­proach by this Gov­ern­ment to change the licks they got at the polls on Mon­day,” he said.

Lee ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to cre­ate pan­ic in the coun­try “by ask­ing peo­ple to bring in all old $100 bills with­in two weeks.”

“So let us say you are out of the coun­try and you don’t re­turn un­til next year, what is your sit­u­a­tion? You would lose the val­ue of mon­ey that might be in your pos­ses­sion,” he said.

Lee said that it was ob­vi­ous that that Gov­ern­ment was in “pan­ic mode.”

“Why the rush to pass this bill this week­end?” Lee asked again.

He called on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to come out against the rush.

“Why two weeks?” Lee said, re­fer­ring to the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to amend the Cen­tral Bank Act to re­duce the in­tro­duc­tion time from three months to 14 days.

Lee said he be­lieved the changeover of the notes will re­duce crim­i­nal fund­ing.

When the notes are in­tro­duced, any­one with the cot­ton-based blue notes would have to go to the banks or the Cen­tral Bank and have that note ex­changed for the new poly­mer bill. They will al­so have to ex­plain their wealth or show a source of funds at that time.

“It is not il­le­gal to have cash,” Lee said.

“We are three weeks be­fore Xmas (Christ­mas). What’s the rush,” Lee said.

While Young, at a post Cab­i­net press brief­ing said that the blue note would be out of cir­cu­la­tion and re­placed by the new poly­mer mon­ey, the Cen­tral Bank, in its re­lease said that both de­nom­i­na­tions would co-cir­cu­late “un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

Ac­cord­ing to Lee, the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness texted the Op­po­si­tion to up­date them on the com­ing amend­ment to the Cen­tral Bank Act.

In that text, it too not­ed that it was the Cen­tral Bank which would de­ter­mine when the blue $100 notes would be­come in­valid.

“Why not do this in Jan­u­ary? It is try­ing to change the nar­ra­tive. The peo­ple not buy­ing in­to the PNM lies,” Lee said.

Chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Gabriel Faria al­so ques­tioned the need to im­ple­ment the new bill dur­ing the hec­tic end of year time.

“It may have been bet­ter to sched­ule it at a less hec­tic time of the year but the au­thor­i­ties may have been told by some ex­perts that this time is more con­ducive to col­lect the old cur­ren­cy based on the amount of cash in cir­cu­la­tion,” he said.

“My own per­spec­tive is that based on the pre­vi­ous changes which were done we do not an­tic­i­pate any prob­lems as we ex­pect there will be a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion and there is some plan in place,” Faria said.

“I am aware that there has been a num­ber of se­cu­ri­ty breach­es with the cur­rent $100 bill and be­lieve this was ad­dressed with the in­tro­duc­tion of the poly­mer $50 bill,” he said.

“I there­fore ex­pect this is why they are in­tro­duc­ing a poly­mer $100 bill,” he said.

Head of the San Juan Busi­ness Cham­ber Vivek Char­ran said he un­der­stood what the Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to ac­com­plish.

“I think the 14 day pe­ri­od may be a bit short, “ he said.

“While it is that they have this dri­ve that would make the large stash­es un­law­ful be­cause they are no longer le­gal ten­der, the re­al­i­ty is that the lines are blurred for dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries, “ Char­ran said.

He said in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, work­ers like join­er, car­pen­ters and ma­sons can earn sig­nif­i­cant sums for their work.

“Some earn in ex­cess of $20,000, $40,000 in a short space of time. Large con­trac­tors hire sub-con­trac­tors and are giv­en $50,000 to run a job. What’s go­ing to hap­pen in that 14-day pe­ri­od?” he said?

He said that labour­ers are paid cash as are hard­ware.

He said this will al­so im­pact the small trade pro­fes­sions who do not have reg­is­tered busi­ness­es.

“Just by virtue of their pro­fes­sion, some do not have reg­is­tered busi­ness­es, the bank can now say they have a prob­lem with prov­ing that the per­son is ac­tu­al­ly a join­er or so, “he said.