For­mer Sen­a­tor­Former Sen­a­tor Tahar­qa Obi­ka spoke at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Charles Street, Port-of-Spain. has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of com­mit­ting a crim­i­nal act as it re­lates to the re­cent in­crease in fu­el prices.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ week­ly me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, he ar­gued that based on the cur­rent price of oil, the move was il­le­gal and un­jus­ti­fied.

When Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed the 2022/2023 fis­cal pack­age last Mon­day, he an­nounced an in­crease in the price of Pre­mi­um and Su­per gaso­line and kerosene by $1 per litre, while diesel was in­creased by 50 cents.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Obi­ka claimed these in­creas­es had since pushed prices sig­nif­i­cant­ly above the un­sub­sidised price and con­sti­tut­ed a crim­i­nal act.

He said it was cit­i­zens who were now sub­si­dis­ing the Gov­ern­ment, adding, “The price of pre­mi­um should not have been raised in that bud­get.”

Crit­i­cal of the pro­posed in­creas­es in the price of elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter to come on an al­ready bur­dened cit­i­zen­ry, Sen­a­tor Wade Mark al­so ac­cused Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land of be­ing thought­less in his bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, when he ad­vised per­sons to re­turn to us­ing a coal pot if they couldn’t af­ford gas.

And with high­er util­i­ty prices ahead, Mark said peo­ple may be forced to re­turn to us­ing la­trines if they could not af­ford high­er wa­ter rates and even flam­beau for light.

Mark de­scribed the re­cent bud­get as a be­tray­al of the na­tion.

De­clar­ing T&T to be trou­bled, Mark said this was ev­i­dent by the stark eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty in which the num­bers paint­ed a sto­ry of per­sis­tent de­cline in the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) by 20 per cent over the past sev­en years.

He said in­stead of fac­ing up to this re­al­i­ty and for­mu­lat­ing ap­pro­pri­ate strate­gies, poli­cies and pro­grammes to ad­dress this, the cit­i­zens were forced to put up with a vi­sion­less, clue­less and di­rec­tion­less Prime Min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment.