Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Uni­ty of The Peo­ple Nick­o­cy Phillips is ac­cus­ing the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of fail­ing to meet the needs of the peo­ple of To­ba­go, while pro­vid­ing fi­nance for the cam­paign­ing in the run up to the THA elec­tions.

Phillips, who held a press con­fer­ence at the Buc­coo In­te­grat­ed Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, called on the Sec­re­tary of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son Ce­les­tine to pro­vide an­swers to a num­ber of con­cerns she has raise.

As “po­lit­i­cal leader to po­lit­i­cal leader” Phillips called on David­son, who is head of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM, to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions of pri­vate cater­ing be­ing done at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal kitchen.

“I have re­ceived re­ports of an al­leged pri­vate cater­ing busi­ness in­side the Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal kitchen I think some­body is us­ing the kitchen re­sources and our tax­pay­ers’ re­sources to do their own cater­ing there.”

She ques­tioned why the THA would rush to open a new hos­pi­tal at Rox­bor­ough when all is not well at the Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal.

“The units at the hos­pi­tal not work­ing those are con­cerns we need to ad­dress be­cause you can­not rush to open a new fa­cil­i­ty and the old one or the one be­fore we still have the ma­chines like the CT Scans etc and the one be­fore that are not work­ing.”

The UTP leader who is the on­ly can­di­date from her par­ty run­ning for a seat in the up­com­ing THA elec­tions will con­test the Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant dis­trict. She al­so called on the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to re­plen­ish the grants and as­sis­tant funds in To­ba­go, which she claims are cur­rent­ly with­out funds.

“Im al­so call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, to this date in 2021 per­sons have not re­ceived their loss of in­come grants they have not re­ceived their oth­er grants fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the min­istry and the Gov­ern­ment.”

She said peo­ple have called the of­fice af­ter hav­ing their ap­pli­ca­tions ap­proved and not re­ceived any funds. She said staff at the of­fice, told ap­pli­cants that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has not re­leased any mon­ey as yet.

Phillips, who said she is fa­mil­iar with the ex­pe­ri­ence, said she too ap­plied for the grant, how­ev­er she is more con­cerned about cit­i­zens in ur­gent need. The UTP leader ques­tioned why per­sons in need are be­ing asked to wait yet the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing funds avail­able for oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

“All they are telling us that its ap­proved but there is no fi­nanc­ing they are wait­ing for fi­nanc­ing from Trinidad, but how come you can find mon­ey for pol­i­tics for elec­tion time how come you could re­lease funds for those things for pol­i­tics we need to wake up in To­ba­go,” she said

Phillips said the UTP will launch their man­i­festo on Jan­u­ary 15. Guardian Me­dia reached to Sec­re­tary for Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment for a re­sponse to ques­tions raised by Phillips – up to news time no re­sponse was re­ceived.