AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is lament­ing that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) on­ly has around $6 mil­lion to spend this fi­nan­cial year on some of the is­land’s most crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­tur­al needs.

Dur­ing the THA ex­ec­u­tives’ work­ing re­treat at the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel in Spey­side yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine and his sec­re­taries gave an up­date on how the THA is go­ing to man­age the $2.585 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to To­ba­go for fi­nan­cial 2024.

Au­gus­tine brought graph­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tions and sought to un­der­score that out of that two-and-half bil­lion, on­ly $260 mil­lion is avail­able for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment.

“I think it’s worth ex­plain­ing again that cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture is what we use to do all of the de­vel­op­ment projects on the is­land. So to fix the schools, health cen­tres, to buy equip­ment that might be much need­ed up at the hos­pi­tal on Sig­nal Hill, to treat with what we have to do in terms of our beach fa­cil­i­ties, to build new roads to treat with in­fra­struc­ture for hous­ing es­tates. In sports, we are talk­ing about our bas­ket­ball courts and play­ing fields and up­grad­ing them, all of this is un­der cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment for $260 mil­lion,” Au­gus­tine ex­plained.

And de­spite get­ting $64.2 mil­lion more than the 2023 fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion, Au­gus­tine want­ed to un­der­score that the ex­tra mon­ey went in­to re­cur­ring ex­pen­di­ture to fa­cil­i­tate salary in­creas­es.

To fur­ther ex­plain how much the $260 mil­lion sum dis­rupts their am­bi­tion for the is­land in 2024, Au­gus­tine sought to use the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment’s al­lo­ca­tion as an ex­am­ple, giv­en that it re­ceived the high­est al­lo­ca­tion for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment at $46.4 mil­lion.

“Most of the de­mands we get at the town hall meet­ings have been on the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture. Peo­ple are call­ing for re­tain­ing walls and drains and for the roads to be paved, for gul­lies and lanes and tracks to be cut, for steps to be re­moved, peo­ple want ac­cess to their homes in com­fort and that is un­der­stand­able. Peo­ple al­so want prop­er traf­fic man­age­ment, so we have calls to have the lines on the road paint­ed and the in­ter­sec­tions on the high­way done well,” he said.

Us­ing an Ex­cel spread­sheet dis­played on a screen, Au­gus­tine said, “In in­fra­struc­ture, we have what is called de­vel­op­ment work­ers, they are the ones we use for the heavy lift­ing in terms of build­ing re­tain­ing walls ... The salaries and wages for de­vel­op­ment work­ers rough­ly are about $1.54 mil­lion every fort­night.”

He said this adds up to $40.3 mil­lion for the fis­cal year.

“Which means in the­o­ry, on our ac­counts, the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture will be left with es­sen­tial­ly $6.1 mil­lion there­abouts for de­vel­op­ment works,” Au­gus­tine not­ed, ask­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans pon­der on those fig­ures.

“It means that the monies we have to build new roads, to fix Bad Rock, to en­sure that we fix Job Street so that when Bad Rock fix peo­ple could pass. To en­sure we do the work we have to do at Mt Hay and Roselle and Or­ange Hill. And for those of you who think I don’t ex­pe­ri­ence it, I very of­ten choose to dri­ve my­self and I drop in the pot­holes and curse just like you. For all of those and every oth­er imag­in­able de­vel­op­ment work you want from in­fra­struc­ture, what re­mains af­ter we’ve paid de­vel­op­ment work­ers will be rough­ly around $6.1 mil­lion, that’s just the re­al­i­ty,” Au­gus­tine lament­ed.

Au­gus­tine said this will force the THA, like years gone by, to find in­no­v­a­tive ways to add to that ac­count which may in­clude tak­ing mon­ey from oth­er di­vi­sions. An­oth­er method, he said, will be hav­ing to owe con­trac­tors through “de­sign-build” fi­nance.
He, there­fore, asked To­bag­o­ni­ans to un­der­stand the THA’s po­si­tion when they came up with their list of de­mands.

“So, when we come to you at the town hall meet­ings and we say look, we are work­ing on your prob­lem, but we need you to be pa­tient. It’s not like I’m ask­ing for you to ex­cuse the di­vi­sion and ex­cuse the line sec­re­taries, I’m just sim­ply say­ing, that based on what we have to ex­e­cute—all of these works—every­one can­not get the help they want at the same time,” Au­gus­tine ex­plained.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said the next step in for­mal­is­ing their fi­nan­cial strat­e­gy will be meet­ing with ad­min­is­tra­tors and ac­count­ing of­fi­cers on No­vem­ber 15.