RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­pares to un­veil the 2024 fis­cal Bud­get to­day, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has con­firmed that ex­ten­sive road paving ef­forts will con­tin­ue in the new fis­cal year as a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty.

In a pre-Bud­get in­ter­view on Sun­day, Sinanan em­pha­sised the com­mit­ment to on­go­ing road im­prove­ment projects, say­ing: “Mas­sive road paving around the coun­try, a con­tin­u­a­tion of all jobs and road im­prove­ment will con­tin­ue in the new fis­cal year.”

He high­light­ed the re­lent­less pace of cur­rent road work, say­ing: “Since Jan­u­ary, we have been do­ing day and night road paving. We did not slow down when the fi­nan­cial year came to an end. We will be con­tin­u­ing in the next fis­cal year.”

Ad­dress­ing the sta­tus of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion, Sinanan re­vealed that the en­tire high­way will soon be open to the pub­lic.

“Every­thing is in place, and we are do­ing the fi­nal touch­ing-up. The full high­way down to Dun­lop Round­about will be opened very soon, maybe with­in the next week,” he re­vealed.

Mean­while, amidst ex­pec­ta­tions and calls for an in­crease in the min­i­mum wage, for­mer UNC chief econ­o­mist Tahar­qa Obi­ka em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of a con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach be­fore a de­ci­sion is made.

He said: “The ex­act amount that the min­i­mum wage set­tles at will be de­ter­mined af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with­in the tri­par­tite con­text, as is typ­i­cal­ly done. The line min­istry with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for such is the Min­istry of Labour. I would not wish to spec­u­late on a tar­get fig­ure un­less one is ar­rived at via this process.”

Obi­ka said any po­ten­tial in­crease in the min­i­mum wage should bal­ance the in­ter­ests of both em­ploy­ers and or­gan­ised labour, par­tic­u­lar­ly recog­nis­ing that min­i­mum wage earn­ers rep­re­sent the foun­da­tion of the eco­nom­ic lad­der. He al­so not­ed that such changes would not im­me­di­ate­ly im­pact pub­lic sec­tor wages, as they typ­i­cal­ly fol­low an in­cre­men­tal pat­tern.

Agron­o­mist Akanath Singh echoed the sen­ti­ment for an in­creased min­i­mum wage, em­pha­sis­ing the fi­nan­cial strain faced by many fam­i­lies.

He point­ed out that some fam­i­lies had turned to home gar­den­ing to re­duce their gro­cery bills, in­di­cat­ing the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges they en­coun­tered.

Singh not­ed that sin­gle moth­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, strug­gle to af­ford gro­ceries with their min­i­mal salaries, point­ing out that an in­crease in the min­i­mum wage could sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­le­vi­ate their fi­nan­cial bur­dens.