Camille McEach­nie

The To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will fo­cus on pro­vid­ing hous­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for low and mid­dle-in­come To­bag­o­ni­ans in the next four years, should the par­ty re­turn to pow­er in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) on Jan­u­ary 25, 2021.

The par­ty rolled out its plans in its man­i­festo at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex on Jan­u­ary 7 be­fore a lim­it­ed in-per­son au­di­ence and vir­tu­al­ly on its so­cial me­dia plat­forms and the lo­cal me­dia.

The theme of the man­i­festo 'Build­ing To­ba­go To­geth­er' spans the pe­ri­od 2021-2025.

Pre­sent­ing the par­ty's hous­ing plans, can­di­date for Prov­i­dence/Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes said the PNM aims to pro­vide To­bag­o­ni­ans with homes.

"We are go­ing to im­ple­ment the To­ba­go Hous­ing Unit, and that hous­ing unit will have the man­date to de­liv­er at least 2,000 hous­ing ser­vice lots...to young To­bag­o­ni­ans. We are al­so go­ing to be look­ing at de­vel­op­ing over 400 homes and 250 rental units."

He said the THA would use new and ex­ist­ing Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ship agree­ments to fa­cil­i­tate its new hous­ing plans.

He said stake­hold­ers for the project have al­ready been iden­ti­fied, and the project will be un­der­tak­en us­ing pri­vate funds.

Can­di­date for Lam­beau/Sig­nal Hill and the par­ty's To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine said the man­i­festo ad­dressed food se­cu­ri­ty, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the is­land, au­ton­o­my, and in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment.

She said the over­all plan is to ex­pand To­ba­go's econ­o­my so that it could make a greater con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion's Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct.

She said the par­ty has al­ways had To­ba­go's in­ter­est at heart as it built 17 new health cen­tres, two hos­pi­tals, and more re­cent­ly, spent $200 mil­lion to mit­i­gate the im­pact of COVID -19.

Battle For Tobago