Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is urg­ing the pub­lic to re­think how it con­sumes fu­el.

His ap­peal came dur­ing a post-Bud­get me­dia con­fer­ence at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, mo­ments af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced a hike in fu­el prices.

Im­bert an­nounced an in­crease in the price of Su­per and Pre­mi­um gaso­line by $1 and diesel by 50 cents a litre. The ad­just­ed prices are now $7.75 a litre for Pre­mi­um, $6.97 a litre for Su­per and $4.41 a litre for diesel. These changes went in­to ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly yes­ter­day.

Row­ley said ad­just­ments had to be made to the sub­sidy and Gov­ern­ment made a con­scious de­ci­sion to cap it at $1 bil­lion in or­der to al­lo­cate funds wise­ly to all oth­er sec­tors.

“It is the Gov­ern­ment’s de­lib­er­ate judg­ment, af­ter look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion that we have come in­to a bit more rev­enue, that we will not use all that rev­enue to on­ly sub­sidise fu­el. Be­cause you could have done that, ...(but) it meant that we could have done noth­ing else for the coun­try, in­clud­ing the peo­ple who would have ben­e­fit­ed from that,” he said.

In light of this, Row­ley urged cit­i­zens to be con­scious of the in­crease and asked them to think of ways to re­duce con­sump­tion.

“I must tell you, I have not heard any con­ver­sa­tion yet from any­body in this coun­try about how we could be­gin to think about how we op­er­ate in an en­vi­ron­ment where the cost of fu­el is in­creased,” he said.

He said peo­ple are still pur­chas­ing the same cars with­out con­sid­er­ing what their per­for­mance would be re­gard­ing fu­el con­sump­tion.

He said there were sev­er­al ques­tions cit­i­zens could ask them­selves and oth­ers to try to make a dif­fer­ence.

“How do I re­duce my own fu­el costs in some cas­es? Maybe you can’t do much about it, but you can at least ask is there any way that I can re­duce my fu­el costs? Do I still make all the trips I used to make? Do I still go as far as I used to go?

He al­so em­pha­sised that pub­lic trans­port was al­ways a vi­able op­tion and even more­so with re­cent new ad­di­tions of bus­es.

“We have not raised the cost of pub­lic trans­port, we bought sev­en new bus­es. Pub­lic trans­port is still avail­able in most lo­ca­tions in the coun­try.”

He said cit­i­zens al­so need to be smarter when plan­ning trips, since it is their choice how they choose to com­mute to their des­ti­na­tions.

“When you trav­el, con­sid­er your fu­el bill if you get in that traf­fic at a par­tic­u­lar hour for no good rea­son and crawl­ing to Port-of-Spain from San­gre Grande. You burnt up fu­el. And if you had cho­sen to go at a dif­fer­ent time, you wouldn’t have had to burn up. But no­body, no­body thinks about the cost of fu­el when they plan a trip in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

On an­oth­er is­sue, Dr Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment had not en­act­ed a work-from-home pol­i­cy, not­ing those mea­sures were on­ly im­ple­ment­ed on­ly as a re­sponse to the de­vel­op­ing sit­u­a­tion that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had cre­at­ed.

“The Gov­ern­ment has not set about to have a work-from-home pol­i­cy, ex­cept when you are forced dur­ing COVID,” PM said.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that the coun­try is al­so not ap­pro­pri­ate­ly equipped to make the tran­si­tion from reg­u­lar of­fice-style work to work­ing from home.

Pri­or to the PM’s speech, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine raised the hike in fares on both the seabridge and air­bridge and asked if any mea­sures would be put in place to help re­lieve the bur­den of costs on stu­dents en­rolled at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Dur­ing the Bud­get, Im­bert an­nounced that the cost of flights on the air­bridge would go from $150 to $200 one-way. Re­gard­ing the seabridge, peo­ple aged 60 and over who pre­vi­ous­ly trav­elled free will now have pay $25 one-way, while stan­dard tick­ets will be raised from $50 to $75 one-way. Pre­mi­um cab­ins will al­so in­crease from $100 to $150 one-way, all ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2023.

In re­sponse to Au­gus­tine’s ques­tion, the PM said no such mea­sures for stu­dents had been put in­to place, since cer­tain poli­cies could not be tai­lored to in­di­vid­u­als and had to be ap­plic­a­ble across the board.

“The ques­tion is, how much does it cost to pro­vide that ser­vice? It’s about sev­en or $800. And if you are asked to pay 200, that is how it ought to be looked at. It can­not be that you don’t like the fare of $200 be­cause the fare is re­al­ly a lot more, that fare car­ries be­tween five and $600 per seat,” Row­ley said.

He said the cur­rent prices were not the true cost of the seats be­tween the is­lands, since prices had been ab­sorbed and would have been ac­count­ed for in an­oth­er sec­tor.

“If you are go­ing to make an is­sue of the cost of 200, you must ac­knowl­edge that it is be­ing paid for in much larg­er mea­sure some­where else by some­body else, the oth­er tax­pay­ers, which is what that $600 is, be­cause the Gov­ern­ment doesn’t own any mon­ey, Gov­ern­ment spends tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, oth­er tax­pay­ers pay $600 you pay 200 to give you the seat, that is how the pop­u­la­tion should look at these sub­si­dies. And it is in wa­ter, it’s elec­tric­i­ty, it is in trans­port be­tween the is­lands. It isn’t wher­ev­er the sub­sidy is,” Row­ley added.