Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The To­ba­go Pub­lic Ser­vice Acad­e­my project is still in its ear­ly stages, with the Gov­ern­ment await­ing a re­port due by the end of fis­cal 2026, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has said.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on ex­pen­di­ture for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for 2026, Tan­coo em­pha­sized, “This Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to work with the peo­ple of To­ba­go and the THA.”

When ques­tioned by Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca MP Do­minic Ro­maine about the sta­tus of the Acad­e­my project, Tan­coo said it was still in the plan­ning phase. “In the last fis­cal year, an in­di­vid­ual was brought on board to do plan­ning, ad­vis­ing, and re­port­ing on the struc­ture and form to be adopt­ed. This is ac­tu­al­ly a work in progress be­fore the ac­tu­al phys­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment,” he added.

Re­gard­ing a bud­get for the full roll­out of the project, Tan­coo ex­plained that the process had on­ly just be­gun. The gov­ern­ment is await­ing the com­mis­sioned re­port, which is ex­pect­ed by the end of fis­cal 2026.

Tan­coo al­so ad­dressed ques­tions raised by PNM MP Bri­an Man­ning con­cern­ing a sup­posed “mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­sur­ance rack­et” with­in the Gov­ern­ment. Man­ning had sug­gest­ed that third-par­ty in­sur­ance laws did not ap­ply to any gov­ern­ment, mu­nic­i­pal, or THA ve­hi­cles and ques­tioned whether state ve­hi­cles were be­ing im­prop­er­ly in­sured.

“Yet we’ve been hear­ing re­peat­ed­ly of line items for third-par­ty in­sur­ance for var­i­ous Min­istries. Is there a mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­sur­ance rack­et tak­ing place in this gov­ern­ment un­der your nose and be­ing fi­nanced by your­self?” Man­ning asked.

Re­spond­ing, Tan­coo not­ed Man­ning’s dis­claimer that he was not a lawyer. “That’s ob­vi­ous­ly true, but I as­sume you were able to un­der­stand stan­dard and ba­sic Eng­lish,” he said, adding that the ques­tion ap­peared to be an at­tempt to “get news­pa­per head­lines.” He con­tin­ued, “But this is not the PNM! So not every­thing is about a rack­et!”

Tan­coo clar­i­fied that the THA pro­vides full com­pre­hen­sive in­sur­ance for its ve­hi­cles. Man­ning claimed he had read the law sug­gest­ing that THA ve­hi­cles were ex­empt. Tan­coo ad­vised him to ei­ther reread the law or con­sult a lawyer. Man­ning sub­se­quent­ly re­quest­ed from the Fi­nance Min­istry a list of all third-par­ty in­sured ve­hi­cles as­signed to the THA, in­clud­ing cov­er­age amounts and the in­sur­ance agen­cies in­volved.

Tan­coo not­ed that Man­ning had made sim­i­lar re­quests in pre­vi­ous Bud­get dis­cus­sions and as­sured that the in­for­ma­tion would be pro­vid­ed. He al­so cor­rect­ed Man­ning, clar­i­fy­ing that no pre­mi­ums are paid to the THA; rather, they are paid by the THA.