?In­tro­duc­tion

As I lis­tened to the Hon Min­is­ter ram­ble on for more than three hours I re­called the say­ing of the Sev­en­teenth Cen­tu­ry French writer and moral­ist Fran­cois de la Rochefou­cauld (1613�1680), who so long ago said: "As great minds have the fac­ul­ty of say­ing a great deal in a few words, so less­er minds have a tal­ent of talk­ing much, and say­ing noth­ing". I do not wish to be un­char­i­ta­ble to the Hon Min­is­ter but I am sure most of you would agree that she had very lit­tle to say, and took a rather long time say­ing it. I be­lieve that the Min­is­ter lost her way be­cause, un­like the UNC in Gov­ern­ment, the PNM does not start from an ide­o­log­i­cal moor­ing, but rather acts as it suits their po­lit­i­cal fan­cy (by vaps, as it were) re­gard­less of the con­se­quences to the coun­try.

The UNC starts from its be­lief that the pur­pose and func­tion of any gov­ern­ment is the wel­fare and well-be­ing of all its peo­ples on a sus­tained ba­sis; the Bud­get is there­fore not a state­ment to be tak­en is iso­la­tion: it is part of a con­tin­u­um de­signed to bring the great­est hap­pi­ness to the great­est num­ber of our cit­i­zens. The em­pha­sis and ob­jec­tive are, and must al­ways be, the hap­pi­ness of our peo­ple. That be­ing so, the big and ob­vi­ous ques­tion must be: Who de­ter­mines what will make our peo­ple hap­py? This sim­ple an­swer is: the peo­ple, of course. Not he PNM; not the lit­tle cor­rupt ca­bal that runs the PNM whose sole con­cern is their own wel­fare and well-be­ing; and cer­tain­ly not the Mem­ber for San Fer­nan­do East or his ubiq­ui­tous obeah woman. That is why pri­or to this our Bud­get re­sponse we em­barked on a se­ries of con­sul­ta­tions with the sev­er­al stake hold­ers in the so­ci­ety to elic­it their views as to what they re­gard­ed as im­por­tant in their lives and what they want­ed. I am told that the Gov­ern­ment al­so went through sim­i­lar mo­tions with sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, just as they did last year. But just as they did last year they ig­nored most of what the peo­ple said. That is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the PNM and the UNC. And that is why af­ter nine years the peo­ple still say that the years be­tween 1995 and 2001 were the best they have ever had, and that the UNC was and has been the best Gov­ern­ment this coun­try has ever seen...and to­day, af­ter nine years of PNM they yearn for those hal­cy­on days.

Over the past two weeks, we, on this side, have met na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to hear from them what their con­cerns were and how they felt these should be ad­dressed. I would like to ex­tend my sin­cere thanks to all these pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens who took the time to par­tic­i­pate in these con­sul­ta­tions, and for in­form­ing my pre­sen­ta­tion here to­day. What is of great con­cern to me, is the fact that many of these per­sons and groups ad­vised that they had al­so spo­ken to and ex­pressed the same is­sues to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. As such I am as dis­ap­point­ed, as I know they are, that in her bud­get 2010 doc­u­ment, she chose to gloss over the ma­jor prob­lems fac­ing the cit­i­zens of this coun­try and opt­ed in­stead to wal­low in sta­tis­ti­cal mis­di­rec­tion in her at­tempts to jus­ti­fy her gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture of over $300 bil­lion since 2002. I re­call that dur­ing the de­bate on the 2008-2009 Bud­get we on this side, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple, told you that the crit­i­cal prob­lems af­fect­ing the peo­ple in gen­er­al were crime, the lack of prop­er health care fa­cil­i­ties, the lack of a reg­u­lar sup­ply of pipe-borne drink­ing wa­ter, un­re­li­able elec­tric­i­ty, in­creas­ing pover­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly among the aged and those on fixed in­comes, bad or non-ex­is­tent roads, high prices, and in par­tic­u­lar high food prices, fail­ure to deal in a sen­si­ble man­ner with agri­cul­ture, poor drainage and flood­ing, lack of ac­cess roads to agri­cul­tur­al lands, the use of agri­cul­tur­al lands for hous­ing, re­al un­em­ploy­ment and the lack of pur­pose and di­rec­tion in train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion and many more; These were some of the mat­ters which re­quired ur­gent at­ten­tion but you ig­nored the needs of the peo­ple be­cause your Bud­get is not about that. Your Bud­get is how you stay in pow­er.

In­stead of ad­dress­ing these sim­ple prob­lems plagu­ing the peo­ple this PNM Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed a Bud­get of over $50 bil­lion...and af­ter an ex­pen­di­ture of such a huge amount of mon­ey the peo­ple are still with­out a so­lu­tion to the prob­lems I have just enu­mer­at­ed. It is no won­der that the 2008-2009 Bud­get was such a dis­as­ter. You start­ed by bas­ing the Bud­get on an es­ti­mat­ed price of oil a $ 70 per bar­rel and gas at $.4 per mmb­tu. The fal­la­cy of this kind of bud­get­ing is that you can fix the price of gas and oil at any ar­bi­trary fig­ure and so pro­vide pro­ject­ed rev­enue at any lev­el you want; but that is rev­enue on shift­ing sand. If you base your ex­pen­di­ture on that kind of un­cer­tain­ty then what do you do when you do not re­al­ize it. You go in­to a tail spin. If how­ev­er you start from the cost of ba­sic needs then the peo­ple will get the most im­por­tant things first be­fore the mon­ey runs out. Wa­ter, roads, health care, drainage be­fore tall build­ings. Your ap­proach is wrong. Mr Speak­er, the Min­is­ter premised her bud­get state­ment with a lie. Ex­er­cis­ing her best pub­lic re­la­tions gim­mick­ry, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance ti­tled her Bud­get "Strength­en­ing ef­fi­cien­cy, ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges".

Un­for­tu­nate­ly her pre­sen­ta­tion did no such thing.

Hav­ing safe­ly ex­tri­cat­ed her­self from the fate of oth­er less for­tu­nate CL Fi­nan­cial de­pos­i­tors, the Min­is­ter seems to have lost sight of what the re­al chal­lenges fac­ing this coun­try are. As she did in last year's Bud­get she does so again in Bud­get 2010. She does not even make the slight­est at­tempt to ad­dress the re­al chal­lenges fac­ing T&T:

�2 Run­away crime

�2 Mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the state sec­tor,

�2 pover­ty,

�2 sab­o­tage of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor,

�2 over re­liance on the en­er­gy sec­tor,

�2 in­ad­e­quate and in­ef­fi­cient health sec­tor,

�2 the aban­don­ment of the aged and the those in as­sis­tance of so­cial as­sis­tance,

�2 state spon­sored en­vi­ron­men­tal de­struc­tion

�2 wors­en­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment

�2 mas­sive flood­ing

�2 high food prices,

�2 in­ad­e­quate ac­cess to hous­ing for the poor and mid­dle in­come

�2 dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change,

�2 col­laps­ing pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture

�2 pro­duc­tiv­i­ty loss due to traf­fic jams

�2 un­der­em­ploy­ment

Bud­get 2010 con­tin­ued in the vein of the past sev­en bud­gets: mak­ing false promis­es they have made be­fore which they nev­er in­tend­ed to keep even when they had all the mon­ey in the world. Do you think they will keep these promis­es now when mon­ey is scarce. A pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment of the state of this na­tion is that the biggest prob­lem we have is the gov­ern­ment it­self. The prob­lems to which I have just al­lud­ed pales in­to in­signif­i­cance when you think about the cor­rup­tion, in­com­pe­tence and mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion of the PNM led by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Fis­cal in­dis­ci­pline

Mr Speak­er, the Hon­or­able Min­is­ter of Fi­nance spent the bet­ter part of her speech pat­ting her­self and her col­leagues on their col­lec­tive backs and re­peat­ed­ly boast­ing of the gov­ern­ment's sound fis­cal dis­ci­pline and man­age­ment of the econ­o­my. Mr Speak­er, joke is joke; but does the Min­is­ter re­al­ly be­lieve that the pop­u­la­tion of this coun­try is so stu­pid as to swal­low that self-serv­ing pan­e­gyric? One year ago, she came to this House and pre­sent­ed a bud­get with a pro­ject­ed sur­plus. With­in weeks she had to re­view the bud­get. And then not once but twice! And still end up with a deficit larg­er than the one pre­dict­ed. Mr Speak­er, that is the ex­act­ly the point I was mak­ing ear­li­er on: they had no pri­or­i­ties and so could not ad­just their pro­ject­ed ex­pen­di­ture. Had they start­ed with a list of pri­or­i­ties they would have been able to ad­just. And to add in­sult to in­jury the Min­is­ter comes to this Par­lia­ment and has the temer­i­ty to say:

"In mak­ing the de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue our ex­pen­di­ture pro­gramme, the records will show that we got it right." (pg 4 Bud­get Speech 2010) The records show that you got it all wrong! Not on­ly is the Gov­ern­ment un­will­ing to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for bring­ing this coun­try to its knees, the Hon­or­able Min­is­ter of Fi­nance ac­tu­al­ly comes to the Par­lia­ment and ex­pects the pop­u­la­tion to be­lieve that hav­ing to bor­row $8.5 bil­lion dol­lars to cov­er state sanc­tioned cor­rup­tion is a good thing? And as with all things un­der the PNM is gets even worse!

The Min­is­ter would have us be­lieve that the fall in rev­enues was un­pre­dictable, no one knew that en­er­gy prices were go­ing to fall, and that is why the deficit is as large as it was last year. Of course, no one knew that the price of oil and gas would fall. That is pre­cise­ly why you should pri­or­i­ties ex­pen­di­ture.OK. So you did not know that the price would fall last year. But what about this year? This year the Min­is­ter knew long in ad­vance that en­er­gy prices would be low and that rev­enues would be low as a re­sult. Yet, Mr Speak­er she has re­turned with an­oth­er whop­ping deficit of $7.7 bil­lion dol­lars. I like this Min­is­ter. She ap­pears to be smil­ing in the face of every ad­ver­si­ty...or least, she ap­pears to be. She came to the Par­lia­ment and tried her best to con­vince the na­tion that all is okay with the econ­o­my and with the coun­try de­spite the dras­tic re­duc­tion in rev­enues, and she con­tin­ues to spend, spend, and spend sub­ject­ing the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to in­creas­ing debt oblig­a­tions.

Against the back­drop of:

�2 a glob­al re­ces­sion,

�2 falling de­mand for our man­u­fac­tured goods,

�2 do­mes­tic con­trac­tion of the econ­o­my,

�2 low prices for our pri­ma­ry ex­port prod­ucts with pro­jec­tions for con­tin­ued low prices and

�2 falling rev­enues,

The in­sis­tence of the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue the same lev­el of ex­pen­di­ture can nev­er be jus­ti­fied. It is il­log­i­cal, it is ir­ra­tional, and makes no eco­nom­ic sense. I am sor­ry to say this but it is sim­ply stu­pid. This ad­min­is­tra­tion, hav­ing long shut its ear against the cries and pleas of the pop­u­la­tion, con­tin­ues in mer­ry obliv­ion to the re­al­i­ties of the cri­sis in which they have thrust this coun­try. In a pe­ri­od of two years, the Min­is­ter has in­creased the pub­lic debt of T&T by a mas­sive $16.2 bil­lion which is equal to 44 per cent of the gov­ern­ment's pro­ject­ed rev­enue for fis­cal 2010! This can be noth­ing ?short of gross fis­cal mis­man­age­ment. I pre­dict that the Min­is­ter's free­hand­ed­ness with the pub­lic's mon­ey will re­sult in a deficit in 2010 of more than the $7.7 bil­lion she claims here to­day.

Rich­es to rags

It is said that those who do not learn from the mis­takes of his­to­ry are con­demned to re­peat­ing them. Or, to put it an­oth­er way do­ing the same thing over and over ex­pect­ing dif­fer­ent re­sults is the first sign of mad­ness. Thir­ty years ago, the PNM took this coun­try from rich­es to rags. Dur­ing the oil boom of the 1970's the PNM Gov­ern­ment was char­ac­ter­ized by wild ex­cess­es, throw­ing mon­ey at every na­tion­al prob­lem with­out ad­dress­ing the is­sues; pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els col­lapsed while in­come lev­els rose, make work projects de­vel­oped as gov­ern­ment gave hand­outs rather than pro­vide pro­duc­tive em­ploy­ment; im­ports sky­rock­et­ed as food pro­duc­tion was sac­ri­ficed to the en­er­gy sec­tor, state sanc­tioned cor­rup­tion flour­ished and squan­der ma­nia at a lev­el pre­vi­ous­ly un­heard of lev­el was the or­der of the day. To­day, some thir­ty years lat­er, the PNM has re­peat­ed the feat, but on a much much larg­er scale. The last sev­en years has wit­nessed a re­peat of the wild ex­cess­es by the gov­ern­ment. In one year this gov­ern­ment spent more than pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ments would have dur­ing a whole term in the 1970's–such was the lev­el of ex­cess­es. They made the same mis­takes–the make work projects, the im­port de­pen­dence, the fail­ure to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, the state sanc­tioned cor­rup­tion, the fail­ure to train fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, the mega projects, the in­ad­e­qua­cy of the sav­ings. Once more the PNM has tak­en the coun­try from rich­es to rags. This time it took a mere four­teen months to ac­com­plish. Mr Speak­er, if the peo­ple sound ir­ri­tat­ed it is be­cause they are. I am of the firm view that this Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment are guilty of crim­i­nal ne­glect.

For sev­en years the Op­po­si­tion UNC came to this house and plead­ed with this gov­ern­ment to re­strain it­self from the ex­cess­es it prac­ticed. For sev­en years we cau­tioned the gov­ern­ment of the need to save, for sev­en years we warned the gov­ern­ment of the po­ten­tial for price shocks and the sever­i­ty of the im­pact it would have on the do­mes­tic econ­o­my. For sev­en years the Op­po­si­tion UNC cau­tioned the gov­ern­ment about putting all its eggs in one bas­ket, and the need to di­ver­si­fy the eco­nom­ic base of the coun­try. For sev­en years the PNM re­fused to lis­ten, and as rev­enues in­creased, ex­pen­di­ture in­creased si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. This coun­try earned al­most $250 bil­lion in rev­enues over the last sev­en years. It has spent $292 in the same pe­ri­od. Yet to­day our cit­i­zens still have to sleep on the floors of our na­tion's hos­pi­tals be­cause of the ab­sence of bed space, our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is ir­rel­e­vant to our needs as a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, func­tion­al lit­er­a­cy re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue, our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor re­mains un­der­de­vel­oped, the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is in de­cline, the min­i­mum wage is un­ac­cept­ably low, tourism is in de­cline... the on­ly thing grow­ing in this coun­try is crime and un­der this PNM gov­ern­ment crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in­clud­ing white col­lar crime.

Man­age­ment–As an ef­fec­tive man­age­ment tool, bud­get­ing in­volves plan­ning, co­or­di­na­tion, con­trol, eval­u­a­tion, re­port­ing and re­view. It fol­lows then that the bud­get must con­tain suf­fi­cient­ly spe­cif­ic or quan­tifi­able tar­gets, the at­tain­ment of which can be eas­i­ly be de­ter­mined by cost­ing or per­for­mance au­dits. Thus, the oc­ca­sion of the an­nu­al bud­get presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the stew­ard­ship of the gov­ern­ment to be as­sessed in re­gard to the lev­el of achieve­ment of the ob­jec­tives which would have been iden­ti­fied. This is why most Bud­gets be­gin with a re­view of the pre­vi­ous year's ex­pen­di­ture, specif­i­cal­ly in terms of at­tain­ing the iden­ti­fied goals. For the first time that I can re­call this year the Re­view of the Econ­o­my is miss­ing from the bun­dle of doc­u­ments giv­en to us. Plan­ning–The an­nu­al bud­get should pro­vides a plan of ac­tion for the next fi­nan­cial year, spec­i­fy­ing the gov­ern­ment's long term and short term ob­jec­tives and quan­ti­fied tar­gets, and there­fore re­quires the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties. At the lev­el of projects and pro­grammes, the choice is be­tween al­ter­na­tive cours­es of ac­tion so as to ad­dress the tra­di­tion­al pub­lic sec­tor goals of, (i) op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources, (ii) sta­bil­i­sa­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, (iii) im­prove­ment of the stan­dard of liv­ing (usu­al­ly as­sessed as an eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­come) and (iv) the pro­mo­tion of eco­nom­ic growth are all pur­sued in an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al con­text. In the short-run, achieve­ment of these goals has to be co­or­di­nat­ed by means of ad­min­is­tra­tive and le­gal in­stru­ments among which bud­get pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure are the most im­por­tant. Plan­ning in the bud­get process re­flects po­lit­i­cal pres­sures as well as fi­nan­cial pres­sures and fi­nan­cial analy­sis.

More­over, the bud­get state­ment must re­flect the ide­ol­o­gy of the gov­ern­ment, man­i­fest­ed in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the gov­ern­ment's pri­or­i­ties, its pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives and spe­cif­ic tar­gets to be at­tained dur­ing the fis­cal year. And the Pub­lic re­la­tions (PR) man­i­festo called the Vi­sion 2020 Op­er­a­tional Plan 2007-10, 2008-2009 Progress Re­port is a study in mis­di­rec­tion. As an ex­am­ple, on Page 29 the Gov­ern­ment lists with great pride that 95 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was now re­ceiv­ing a potable wa­ter sup­ply. On page 271, the re­port in­di­cates that in 2008, the same 95 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion had a potable wa­ter sup­ply. It goes fur­ther, in 2008, 76 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion did not have a wa­ter sup­ply on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis. One year lat­er, Mr Speak­er, in 2009, the fig­ure was still un­changed. That means that de­spite the ex­pen­di­ture of $2.4 bil­lion on WASA in 2009, there was no im­prove­ment in the num­ber of per­sons re­ceiv­ing a wa­ter sup­ply. So where has the mon­ey gone?

More­over, ac­cord­ing to the da­ta, it cost tax­pay­ers $10 bil­lion be­tween 2005 to 2009 in or­der to have a 3 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of per­sons who re­ceive a potable wa­ter sup­ply. Us­ing CSO pop­u­la­tion fig­ures it was es­ti­mat­ed that 3 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion trans­lat­ed in­to 39,257 per­sons. And here is where it get scary, Mr Speak­er, by us­ing the da­ta pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment, I have cal­cu­lat­ed that this gov­ern­ment paid an av­er­age of $254,731 per per­son, to pro­vide a potable wa­ter sup­ply to an in­di­vid­ual. A Quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars per per­son Mr Speak­er. It gets worse. If we as­sume, that more than one per­son lives in the same house, let's for sake of ar­gu­ment say two per­sons per house, and this is ex­treme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, it means that it cost tax pay­ers half mil­lion dol­lars per house to have ac­cess (not a reg­u­lar sup­ply, mind you) to potable wa­ter. At those fig­ures it is cheap­er to pur­chase a small re­verse os­mo­sis ma­chine for every sin­gle one of those per­sons, and nev­er have to wor­ry about WASA line main­te­nance again!

So you see Mr Speak­er, the da­ta pro­vid­ed con­cealed more than it re­vealed.

Bud­get fal­lac­i­es

2 per cent growth 2010:

This Bud­get con­tains many fal­lac­i­es. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, in the midst of a glob­al re­ces­sion and the first ten­ta­tive steps of what may be re­cov­ery on the in­ter­na­tion­al sce­nario, and in the midst of a sig­nif­i­cant down­turn in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my, man­ages to project a re­turn to pos­i­tive growth in 2010?

While I re­spect her learn­ing in the law, this Min­is­ter has demon­strat­ed ab­solute­ly no knowl­edge of ba­sic eco­nom­ic prin­ci­ples and man­age­ment prac­tices since she has been in this house; claims not to un­der­stand what "roll over" means...in the in­sur­ance in­dus­try, of course, but in­cred­u­lous­ly is pre­dict­ing a 2 per cent growth in re­al GDP in fis­cal 2010? How has she come up­on this fig­ure is any­body's guess? If there is go­ing to be a 2 per cent growth in 2010 then there must be cer­tain sec­tors with­in which the Min­is­ter ex­pects there will be suf­fi­cient growth to lead to an over­all 2 % growth. Which are these? It can­not be oil as oil prices and out­put are low and are not ex­pect­ed to grow in the short term. It cer­tain­ly can­not be gas be­cause even the Min­is­ter ac­cepts that gas prices are ex­pect­ed to re­main low for some time and this will dis­cour­age ex­plo­ration. Is it agri­cul­ture? That is im­pos­si­ble giv­en that the sec­tor con­tributes less than one per cent of GDP on an an­nu­al ba­sis? Is it tourism? Man­u­fac­tur­ing? Con­struc­tion? What?

Mr Speak­er none of the cur­rent sec­tors are in a po­si­tion to gen­er­ate ad­e­quate val­ue added to pull this econ­o­my out of the hole it is in, and cer­tain­ly the Min­is­ter's 2010 bud­get of­fers noth­ing to spark a resur­gence in ANY sec­tor of the econ­o­my. We on this side have ab­solute­ly no con­fi­dence in the Min­is­ter's pro­jec­tion of pos­i­tive growth in 2010. We see noth­ing to en­gen­der pub­lic con­fi­dence and to stim­u­late con­sumer de­mand. We see noth­ing here to stem the fall in busi­ness con­fi­dence. It is clear that she is seek­ing to gen­er­ate busi­ness con­fi­dence but her words and the ac­tions of the gov­ern­ment do not match. The Min­is­ter has been wrong on every pro­jec­tion she has made about the econ­o­my in the last two years, and we are cer­tain that she is wrong again. In fact it ap­pears that the Min­is­ter has pegged her hopes not in the de­vel­op­ment of the non en­er­gy sec­tor, but in the re­bound of nat­ur­al gas prices. In­ter­na­tion­al events in­di­cate that this is fool­hardy, and once again, reck­less.

Mo­tor ve­hi­cle re­lat­ed tax­es

I now turn to the mo­tor ve­hi­cle and re­lat­ed tax­es. The UNC phi­los­o­phy is premised on a sim­ple tax code, with low tax­a­tion rates but with high com­pli­ance. In this sce­nario, the ex­is­tence of nui­sance tax­es is to be avoid­ed. This pop­u­la­tion will re­call that dur­ing the term of the UNC gov­ern­ment we did not raise a sin­gle tax even though oil was at an av­er­age of $10 per bar­rel. Nui­sance tax­es make life too dif­fi­cult for the or­di­nary peo­ple. And the tax­es ex­pect­ed to be raised by in­creas­ing the fines on traf­fic of­fences is based on the pre­sump­tion of con­tin­ued law­less­ness. This is the first time I have seen the suc­cess of a bud­get based on an in­crease in crime. It is in this light that the in­creased penal­ties should be ex­am­ined. A bud­get is not the place to deal with fines as a de­ter­rent road fa­tal­i­ties. That is for a leg­isla­tive and ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­gramme. Mr Speak­er, the Min­is­ter is not fool­hardy enough to be­lieve that a $1,000 fine for a bro­ken tail­light or the 1,000 per cent in­crease in the fine for il­le­gal tints will stop the car­nage on the na­tion's roads. Cer­tain­ly she does not think that the pop­u­la­tion be­lieves that this was the pur­pose of the in­creased fine. As a mat­ter of fact I find it cu­ri­ous that the Min­is­ter seems more in­tent in pre­vent­ing dark tints than in pe­nal­is­ing speed­ing dri­vers.

Mr Speak­er, the fine for mur­der is death and yet every day some­one is mur­dered in this coun­try. These fines will have no ef­fect on the rate of road car­nage be­cause of the in­crease in fines be­cause the re­sources re­quired for polic­ing are woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate. There are sim­ply not enough po­lice of­fi­cers avail­able for these fines to make a dif­fer­ence. What are re­quired are not in­creas­es in penal­ties, it is in­creased polic­ing, and in the ab­sence of that , these fines must be viewed for what they are: a des­per­ate at­tempt by a gov­ern­ment on the ropes to grab mon­ey from any­where ?pos­si­ble to fund their squan­der­ma­nia.

If the Min­is­ter was re­al­ly se­ri­ous about stop­ping the car­nage in the roads, po­lice of­fi­cers would not have to hide be­hind posts and raise a stick to sig­nal a speed­er. They would be equipped with speed guns. If the Min­is­ter was re­al­ly se­ri­ous about ad­dress­ing the car­nage on the road she would have im­ple­ment­ed the use of the breathal­yser. The con­clu­sion is ob­vi­ous. These fines are pure and sim­ple des­per­ate at­tempts to prop up gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture. In­ci­den­tal­ly, what be­came of all that cam­era equip­ment that was brought in for the Sum­mit Con­fer­ence. Are they still there? If they are there are they work­ing? From a $50 bil­lion bud­get last year to pick­ing the pock­ets of mo­torists to fill the void cased by squan­der­ma­nia, how far we have fall­en, and so fast. Mr Speak­er there has al­so been some is­sues raised by mo­torists about the process used by the po­lice to de­ter­mine the le­gal­i­ty or il­le­gal­i­ty of the tint on ve­hi­cles. I am ad­vised that a spe­cial piece of equip­ment is re­quired to prove that the tint is il­le­gal and that there­fore the Min­istry is putting Li­cens­ing Of­fi­cers at a dis­ad­van­tage in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties. And talk­ing about the Li­cens­ing Of­fice can this Gov­ern­ment ex­plain why this au­thor­i­ty is not com­put­er­ized? Would that not re­duce crime?

Prop­er­ty Tax

I now turn to the in­fa­mous and no­to­ri­ous Prop­er­ty Tax. Mr Speak­er, for the first time we have seen gov­ern­ment in­tro­duce tax on wealth. The Min­is­ter ad­vis­es that prop­er­ty tax­es are old and colo­nial and she is there­fore mov­ing to mod­ernise this. But does she un­der­stand what a prop­er­ty tax is? A prop­er­ty tax is a tax that is levied on prop­er­ty in a par­tic­u­lar ju­ris­dic­tion and the in­come from the tax levied is pooled with oth­er prop­er­ty tax­es from the ju­ris­dic­tion to be used for the ben­e­fit of that ju­ris­dic­tion in which the prop­er­ty is lo­cat­ed. It has its ra­tio­nale in the US School dis­tricts sys­tem where prop­er­ty tax­es fi­nance school boards, and the lev­el of tax usu­al­ly re­flects the stan­dard of the school in the area.

Ap­ply­ing a prop­er­ty tax in the sce­nario she has pre­sent­ed is re­gres­sive, as it is re­lat­ed to the pro­vi­sion of no ser­vice and the rev­enue goes in­to the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund. This too is to be seen for what it is, a des­per­ate at­tempt to raise funds to sat­is­fy the gov­ern­ment spend­ing craze. The prop­er­ty tax is al­so re­gres­sive for an­oth­er rea­son. It pe­nalis­es ini­tia­tive. Mr Speak­er, in T&T there are many pen­sion­ers who have man­aged to save their mon­ey and have in­vest­ed it in a home dur­ing their work­ing lives. Their sav­ing then is man­i­fest­ed in their home. These per­sons are now be­ing asked to find what is a sub­stan­tial sum to pay on an an­nu­al ba­sis when they are al­ready in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion of fixed and low in­comes.

The Gov­ern­ment en­cour­aged many per­sons to ac­quire homes via the NHA and now the HDC. These are poor per­sons. The gov­ern­ment of­fered them grants and loans to fix up their homes. And now, like a thief in the night has blind­sided them with this tax. A small three bed­room home in an av­er­age neigh­bor­hood may be rent­ed out for about $5,000 per month, or $60,000 per year. The own­er of this home would now be ex­pect­ed to find $1,800 per year which is a sub­stan­tial fig­ure for a pen­sion­er! More­over many of these per­sons would al­ready be ser­vic­ing mort­gages! The puni­tive ef­fect of this tax will be felt most by those who built in what were once rur­al ar­eas like Princes Town, Cou­va, etc., which have be­come towns and these who live along the ma­jor road­ways of this coun­try. We on this side be­lieve that this tax is re­gres­sive and I want to sug­gest that the gov­ern­ment re­con­sid­er the fi­nanc­ing of its wastage in an­oth­er man­ner. But as with every­thing un­der the PNM it gets worse. What hap­pens if the home­own­er has a par­lour or a pro­duce shed un­der his house with­in which he sells ex­tra pro­duce form his gar­den as is com­mon along the road­ways of this coun­try? It be­comes a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty and will now be levied at twice the rate of a res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty! I won­der too Mr Speak­er about who will be re­spon­si­ble for the as­sess­ment? It is to be not­ed that the Min­is­ter is re­fer­ring to a na­tion­wide ex­er­cise? And how fre­quent­ly will the as­sess­ment be done?

Frankly, Mr Speak­er, this tax sends the wrong sig­nal to cit­i­zens. It dis­cour­ages home own­er­ship and this will have im­pli­ca­tions for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try which the Min­is­ter is seek­ing to stim­u­late. It hit the mid­dle class square­ly in the so­lar plexus. The Min­is­ter has taxed for­eign used cars and homes. Like last year the Min­is­ter seeks to pe­nalise the mid­dle class and the poor. She seeks to pe­nalise the in­vest­ment in prop­er­ty. Soon un­der the PNM on­ly the very rich will be able to af­ford to buy new ve­hi­cles and to own a house. In clas­sic fash­ion how­ev­er, the Min­is­ter has giv­en with one hand, in­cen­tives to stim­u­late the con­struc­tion sec­tor and has with this tax, neu­tral­ized the ef­fect of the in­cen­tive.

Bro­ken Promis­es

A Gov­ern­ment of bro­ken promis­es; that is what the PNM has be­come. A Gov­ern­ment of lies, de­ceit and hypocrisy. There is a say­ing at­trib­uted to the Prophet Muham­mad, peace be up­on him, that warns, and I quote: "There are three signs of a hyp­ocrite: when he speaks he speaks lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is trust­ed he be­trays this trust." Mr Speak­er, every year since 2002, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance comes to this Cham­ber and com­mits to un­der­tak­ing projects, which in many cas­es in­cludes fund­ing for them in the draft es­ti­mates and in the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, or in the PSIP. Un­for­tu­nate­ly it has be­come the habit of the PNM gov­ern­ment not to un­der­take these project, of­ten with no ex­pla­na­tion and no ac­count­ing for the funds as­signed to them. Sad­ly many of these projects are ac­tu­al­ly crit­i­cal­ly need­ed in­fra­struc­tur­al projects, and in many cas­es pub­lic works such as schools, preschools, hos­pi­tals, high­ways, drainage and the like. In oth­er cas­es pol­i­cy re­lat­ed promis­es in­clud­ing Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Plans are al­so sched­uled and nev­er de­liv­ered. We are all too fa­mil­iar with some of these projects. They have been with us for a while, re­peat­ed­ly promised by this Gov­ern­ment and nev­er de­liv­ered. As such, bud­getary promis­es tend to be viewed with sus­pi­cion and sar­casm. We are con­vinced that if the gov­ern­ment did not de­liv­er the projects which they promised when they had mon­ey, they most cer­tain­ly will not do so now, when funds are scarce as a re­sult of the cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic cli­mate and their prof­li­gate ex­pen­di­ture.

More­over, I find it shame­less that the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance would have been re­duced to ex­tract­ing from her pre­de­ces­sor's bag of bro­ken promis­es, to pad her Bud­get Speech 2010. This is an un­pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice, and an un­eth­i­cal one. Pla­gia­rism should ap­ply to politi­cians, not on­ly to priests. I am cer­tain that the min­is­ter has no in­ten­tion to im­ple­ment these re­cy­cled com­mit­ments and as such to in­clude them in her pre­sen­ta­tion is noth­ing short of in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­hon­esty. The re­sult has been a pop­u­la­tion that no longer has con­fi­dence in the words of the gov­ern­ment even when they are en­act­ed in statute. In the case of this gov­ern­ment, his­to­ry has shown us that they can­not be trust­ed at all. Sad­ly, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, a po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte has shown how quick­ly she is able to adapt to the PNM tra­di­tion of mak­ing promis­es meant to be bro­ken. In lis­ten­ing to the Hon­or­able Min­is­ter of Fi­nance on Mon­day, if the pop­u­la­tion had a sense of d�j� vu, a strange fa­mil­iar­i­ty with many of the pro­pos­als and projects iden­ti­fied in the pre­sen­ta­tion, you were not alone. So was I, all too fa­mil­iar with some of the pro­pos­als and bro­ken promis­es to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Let us look at just a few of them.

Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny

In her re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance an­nounced with a straight face: "Mr Speak­er, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a ma­jor dis­in­cen­tive to agri­cul­ture. This Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to putting an end to this il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty and will soon im­ple­ment the Agri­cul­ture Ranger Squad (ARS) to re­duce the in­ci­dence of theft with­in agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties. The Squad will pro­vide a 24-hour po­lice pres­ence in des­ig­nat­ed agri­cul­tur­al ar­eas. The first phase of the project is ear­marked for the coun­ty of Ca­roni with fo­cus on the Carlsen Field com­mu­ni­ty." (Bud­get 2010) One year be­fore, this very Min­is­ter in this very House stat­ed: "Mr Speak­er, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is one of the great­est scourges that plague our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and is a def­i­nite dis­in­cen­tive to po­ten­tial in­vestors in the sec­tor. The Gov­ern­ment will be tak­ing strin­gent mea­sures to put an end to this il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. At the Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Food Prices last year, a new arrange­ment in­clud­ing sup­port from pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices was an­nounced to treat with the ques­tion of Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny" (Bud­get 2009).

For ref­er­ence Mr Speak­er you would re­call that we had proved that a Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad ex­ist­ed in the es­tab­lish­ment and had long been so. In fact it car­ried a reg­u­lar com­ple­ment of 39 per­sons of vary­ing ranges. The prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny squad still ex­ists in the 2010 es­ti­mates of ex­pen­di­ture for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. The 2010 Agri­cul­tur­al Ranger Squad will in fact have the same func­tion as the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad and for all in­tents and pur­pos­es is the same in prin­ci­ple. It ap­pears that the Min­is­ter sim­ply re­named the Squad. What an achieve­ment! But it gets worse. The PNM Gov­ern­ment promised a Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad as far back as in the Bud­get Speech for fis­cal 2007. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance said then: "Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide fund­ing, man­pow­er, equip­ment and ad­e­quate lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Po­lice Unit." (Bud­get 2007) Even then it was al­ready a part of the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture. The Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Unit was not es­tab­lished in 2007 as promised. But this new Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has the du­bi­ous hon­or of mak­ing the same promise in two con­sec­u­tive years. We look for­ward to 2011 to see a re­turn of this promise be­cause it is clear, if the gov­ern­ment did not im­ple­ment the project when it had mon­ey, it cer­tain­ly was un­like­ly to im­ple­ment it in times of low rev­enues.

Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal

Per­haps the most re­peat­ed promise, and by ex­ten­sion the one they most fail to keep is the promise to build a hos­pi­tal in Point Fortin. This year the Min­is­ter said: Mr Speak­er, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 beds will be avail­able up­on the com­ple­tion of the Point Fortin, Ari­ma, San­gre Grande and Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tals which will be con­struct­ed on a phased ba­sis. The irony is that the Min­is­ter ap­pears bliss­ful­ly un­aware that the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal has not been start­ed up to the time of her speak­ing. In the 2004 Bud­get Speech, the?Min­is­ter of Fi­nance had promised: "Con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin dur­ing this year on: the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre at the EWM­SC, the St James Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, the Point Fortin Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal" (Bud­get 2004.) It didn't start then. In 2005 the promise was re­peat­ed thus: "Con­struc­tion of the new Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal will al­so start in 2005." (Bud­get 2005)

It didn't start then ei­ther! In the 2006 Bud­get Speech once more the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal was promised. The Min­is­ter said then: By 2007, we ex­pect that con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin and Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tals, the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre and a new wing of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal will all be com­plet­ed." (Bud­get 2006)

Pre­sent­ing the 2007 Bud­get, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said: The con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin and Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tals, as well as a new wing of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal are pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2007. The con­struc­tion of the Na­tion­al Health Lab­o­ra­to­ry will al­so com­mence in 2007. Bud­get 2007) They did not build it in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and they cer­tain­ly will not build it in 2010. On the Promise of high­ways, or is it the high­way of promis­es? Mr Speak­er the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance an­nounced that by the end of March 2010, it is ex­pect­ed that con­struc­tion will be­gin on the fol­low­ing new ma­jor high­way projects:

�2 The ex­ten­sion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin;

�2 The con­struc­tion of a new high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Ma­yaro;

�2 The ex­ten­sion of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way from Waller­field to Man­zanil­la, and

�2 The con­struc­tion of a Cause­way from Mu­cu­rapo to Ch­aguara­mas. (Bud­get 2010)

These too were not new ideas hav­ing been promised sev­er­al times be­fore and not de­liv­ered. In the 2004 Bud­get Speech the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance had promised that in 2005, the con­struc­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way to Point Fortin was sched­uled to be­gin. In 2005, the Min­is­ter's bud­get speech com­mit­ted the gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way from Waller­field to Man­zanil­la. The cause­way from Mu­cu­rapo to Ch­aguara­mas was promised in the 2006 Bud­get, as well as the con­struc­tion of a new high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Princes Town. In the 2007 bud­get again high­ways were promised to San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin, San Fer­nan­do to Princes Town, and Waller­field to Man­zanil­la. Mr Speak­er the mega farms were promised be­fore, the CNG was promised be­fore, and the con­struc­tion of sev­er­al EC­CEs are an an­nu­al promise now.

Ex­change rate

I now turn to the Ex­change rate. We on this side are aware that mat­ters re­gard­ing the ex­change rate must be han­dled care­ful­ly. We are com­mit­ted to a sta­ble ex­change rate, one that is pre­dictable and which will re­main sta­ble for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time. But the ac­tions of this gov­ern­ment are caus­ing us on this side and cit­i­zens gen­er­al­ly, great dis­tress. On one hand cen­tral bank ra­tioning for­eign ex­change to cit­i­zens and firms, and thus the mar­ket is be­ing tight­ly man­aged. But the gov­ern­ment fis­cal in­dis­ci­pline over the 2008/9 and in the up­com­ing fis­cal year 2010 will end the pre­dict­ed re­duc­tion in for­eign ex­change earn­ings from the en­er­gy sec­tor has put se­vere pres­sure on the ex­change re­serves. In last year es­ti­mat­ed that Cen­tral Bank lost about $1.5 bil­lion of for­eign re­serves in try­ing to meet con­sumer de­mand. Our for­eign ex­change re­serves then, fell by $1.5 bil­lion. At that rate we will like­ly lose an­oth­er $1.5 bil­lion in the new fis­cal 2010. The Min­is­ter is spend­ing at a rapid rate, liv­ing in the hope that en­er­gy prices will re­cov­er while the rest of us are liv­ing in knowl­edge that things are bad.

The Min­is­ter is en­gag­ing in a course of ac­tion which will burn a huge hole in our re­serves in fis­cal year 2010, and I warn of a very re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of a se­ri­ous prob­lem. In case you think I am be­ing alarmist, I want to re­mind you that the PNM in 1983 to 1986 en­gaged in the same reck­less be­hav­ior and burned all the coun­try's sav­ings in three years re­sult­ing in bank­rupt­cy. The lev­el of the burn by this gov­ern­ment is sub­stan­tial­ly greater, so the cri­sis may emerge much soon­er. The Min­is­ter must make a def­i­nite state­ment about the for­eign ex­change par­i­ty. Al­ready, de­spite be­ing man­aged by the Cen­tral Bank, cit­i­zens are hav­ing grave dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change and are be­ing sub­ject­ed to a process of ra­tioning. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are un­able to guar­an­tee pay­ment for in­puts. Con­tain­ers at the port are ac­cru­ing charges dai­ly as pay­ments are de­layed, so af­fect­ing ad­verse­ly their com­pet­i­tive­ness. Mr Speak­er, the Gov­ern­ment's reck­less ex­pen­di­ture pat­tern is push­ing this coun­try to­wards a pos­si­ble de­val­u­a­tion in the short term, and I ex­pect that the Min­is­ter would make a firm and au­thor­i­ta­tive state­ment, one that she could back up, in re­gard to the gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy about de­val­u­a­tion. I want to point the Min­is­ter in the di­rec­tion of true man­age­ment. Un­der the UNC, the price of oil dropped by 50 per cent from UD$ 19 to US$ 9 while the UNC was in of­fice. The ef­fect on the ex­change rate was ze­ro. That is pru­dent man­age­ment Mr Speak­er, of the kind that this Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment are in­ca­pable. In boom times when mon­ey is aplen­ty, al­most any­body can man­age an econ­o­my. It takes knowl­edge and abil­i­ty to steady the econ­o­my when funds are scarce.

Busi­ness

Our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor con­tin­ued its pre­cip­i­tous de­cline through­out 2008 and now 2009, as the gov­ern­ment fo­cused on make work projects and hand­outs rather than the de­vel­op­ment of per­ma­nent well pay­ing jobs, so the Prime Min­is­ter could de­clare full em­ploy­ment at around 5per cent back in 2007. I guess now that more than 10,000 jobs have been lost and the un­em­ploy­ment rate has once more reached 5 per cent, the Prime Min­is­ter will con­tin­ue to crow that the coun­try has again achieved full em­ploy­ment. This would be the first Gov­ern­ment that achieved full em­ploy­ment by a loss of jobs. Mr Speak­er, when the PNM was elect­ed in­to gov­ern­ment in 2002, this coun­try was ranked as hav­ing the 39th in the world in terms of com­petive­ness. By the 2007 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the rank­ing had dropped con­tin­u­ous­ly to 84th place. Ac­cord­ing to the 2010 Re­port, by 2009 this coun­try had fall­en again to 86th place in terms of its econ­o­my's com­pet­i­tive­ness. With all the mon­ey at its dis­pos­al, and as the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to dream, asleep at the wheel, about De­vel­oped Coun­try Sta­tus the Na­tions abil­i­ty to com­pete on the glob­al scale con­tin­ues to dwin­dle. But as with all things un­der this PNM gov­ern­ment, it gets worse.

You see while the over­all rat­ing of the econ­o­my is 86th, the coun­try fared much worse in terms of some in­sight­ful sub in­dices: Un­der the sub in­dex mea­sur­ing "pub­lic trust of politi­cians" this coun­try was ranked at 100! Colom­bia was ranked 12 places above T&T un­der the PNM at 88! I see some mem­bers smil­ing on the oth­er side–do not. There is more. How do you think this coun­try ranked in re­gard to the as­sess­ment of the ex­tent of the di­ver­sion of pub­lic funds to com­pa­nies, in­di­vid­u­als or groups? T&T was placed at 81 mean­ing that this coun­try was more cor­rupt than 61 per cent of the coun­tries in the world. Do you see why this gov­ern­ment can­not ac­count for the bil­lions which it bilked from the trea­sury? Do you see why so many projects were left un­done? Do you see why this coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness is low? When the as­sess­ment was done on the sub in­dex fa­voritism in de­ci­sions of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials when de­cid­ing on poli­cies and in the award of con­tracts this coun­try was ranked at a sick­en­ing 107th out of the 133 coun­tries in the study. Every coun­try in the Caribbean ranked above T&T! Out of a rat­ing of 1 for gov­ern­ments which usu­al­ly fa­vor well con­nect­ed firms and in­di­vid­u­als and 7 if cor­rup­tion of this source nev­er oc­curs, T&T scored 2.3 which sug­gests mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the award of con­tracts! The world knows that this gov­ern­ment, led by the Hon­or­able Patrick Man­ning is cor­rupt to the core! And they have not even heard of the open pil­lage of the coun­try's trea­sury which the UFF in­quiry is re­veal­ing!

If you feel sick­ened now Mr Speak­er then per­haps you should not lis­ten to the next one.

When the waste­ful­ness of gov­ern­ment spend­ing is as­sessed, it comes as no sur­prise, giv­en this lev­el of cor­rup­tion, that T&T place­ment was poor. Of the 134 coun­tries sur­veyed, it was found that on­ly 44 were guilty of more waste­ful spend­ing, than this PNM Gov­ern­ment. One of the core ra­tio­nales be­hind this GCI as­sess­ment, is to iden­ti­fy fac­tors which in­hib­it the econ­o­my's com­pet­i­tive­ness so that a na­tion can take the rel­e­vant ac­tion in or­der to en­sure the de­vel­op­ment of its econ­o­my and the fu­ture pros­per­i­ty of its cit­i­zens by ex­ten­sion. With this in mind, and giv­en all that I have just re­vealed, it is ob­vi­ous that this gov­ern­ment is a par­a­site leech­ing the life force out of this coun­try for the ben­e­fit of its friend and fam­i­ly of its friends. In or­der for T&T to de­vel­op and to achieve its true po­ten­tial, it is im­per­a­tive that this PNM Gov­ern­ment, those Min­is­ters op­po­site must be re­moved forth­with. The sec­ond in­dex pro­duced by the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port looks at the mi­cro­eco­nom­ic fac­tors which de­ter­mine an econ­o­my's cur­rent sus­tain­able lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness and is called the Busi­ness Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex. This in­dex is premised on the un­der­stand­ing that while a sound and strong econ­o­my pro­vides the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a coun­try to cre­ate wealth, it does not in it­self cre­ate wealth.

In­stead it is the qual­i­ty of the na­tion­al busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment and the lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with which a na­tion us­es the hu­man, cap­i­tal, and nat­ur­al re­sources avail­able to it, to pro­duce goods and ser­vices which in turn cre­ates wealth. When the PNM took over of­fice from the UNC in 2002, the Busi­ness Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex de­ter­mined that T&T had the 39th most com­pet­i­tive­ness en­vi­ron­ment. One year lat­er the PNM had tak­en the rank­ing to 48th place and by the time of the last Gen­er­al Elec­tion in 2007, PNM lack of con­cern for this coun­try's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment had pushed T&T in­to 74th place. The ab­sence of a sol­id na­tion­al busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment does not sim­ply mean that firms would be placed at a dis­ad­van­tage in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket place, it al­so means that new firms will not be in­clined to en­ter the do­mes­tic mar­ket. The fact that this coun­try has been able to at­tract sub­stan­tial di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment over the past sev­en years is not dis­count­ed. You see, what in­vest­ment did come here, on­ly did so af­ter the gov­ern­ment was forced to of­fer sub­stan­tial tax con­ces­sions, guar­an­teed sub­si­dized nat­ur­al gas and so on. In some cas­es the gov­ern­ment had to spend bil­lions in in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, be­fore the in­vestors would look past the coun­try's poor ?busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

Once more, this gov­ern­ment fail­ure to de­vel­op the na­tion­al busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment placed this coun­try at a dis­ad­van­tage and to com­pen­sate for it, the Prime Min­is­ter and his Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has sad­dled this coun­try with tax and sup­ply oblig­a­tions for decades in­to the fu­ture. The ex­tent of the oblig­a­tions which fu­ture gen­er­a­tions have to meet re­mains a close­ly guard­ed se­cret by this gov­ern­ment, con­cealed from those who have to ful­fill the oblig­a­tions. In this coun­try, un­der the PNM, the price of gas is such a state se­cret that the gov­ern­ment re­fus­es to ad­vise how much mon­ey we get from gas rents, and at what price the coun­try's nat­ur­al gas is to be­ing sold. Once more, when the Ho­n­ourable Patrick Man­ning be­came Prime Min­is­ter in 2002, this qual­i­ty of coun­try's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment was ranked at 41st in the world. By 2007, T&T had fall­en by a whop­ping 34 places to 74th.

Mr Speak­er, de­spite know­ing the dam­age the PNM has done this coun­try's glob­al and busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness, and the qual­i­ty of the na­tion­al busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment as well, the 2010 bud­get does noth­ing to ef­fect a change. On the con­trary, it re­peats the same mis­takes of the past and so the pre­dictable wors­en­ing of the na­tion's com­pet­i­tive edge will con­tin­ue. In light of the fore­go­ing, the re­cent­ly es­tab­lished Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil is doomed to fail. It ap­pears more like­ly that like the Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ment, the Coun­cil is mere­ly a pub­lic re­la­tions gim­mick to give the ap­pear­ance that the gov­ern­ment is do­ing some­thing. In fact, like with the 2020 doc­u­ment, the gov­ern­ment is once more go­ing to squan­der the good in­ten­tions and rep­u­ta­tions of those who have agreed to serve on the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil.

Mr Speak­er, when I met last week with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives they ad­vised that they had again sub­mit­ted their con­cerns and pro­pos­als to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance so she knows what their con­straints are. Every busi­ness–small, medi­um and large –cit­ed the same prob­lems, some of these were:

�2 Crime–the fear of be­ing kid­napped, robbed or killed

n Dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change as banks were ra­tioning US dol­lars.

�2 Prob­lems at the port caus­ing de­lays and ad­di­tion­al costs to im­porters, as the long await­ed ASY­CU­DA com­put­er­i­za­tion ap­pears still­born

�2 High­er elec­tric­i­ty charges

�2 In­fla­tion

�2 Dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing la­bor

�2 Re­cent­ly there has al­so been in­creased ship­ping costs

The Min­is­ter is aware of these prob­lems, and in yet an­oth­er bud­get, she has failed mis­er­ably to ad­dress them.

Crime

Crime, the most ur­gent is­sue oc­cu­pied the least place in the Min­is­ter's Bud­get. Mr Speak­er what can I say that has not been said to this gov­ern­ment about the is­sue of crime? We, on this side, have done every­thing we can in an at­tempt to per­suade the Prime Min­is­ter to take a se­ri­ous ap­proach to con­trol­ling the spi­ral­ing crime scourge that has been ter­ror­is­ing the in­no­cent cit­i­zens of T&T. But like Pharaoh, his heart has been hard­ened–pace­mak­er and all. We have heard every pos­si­ble ex­cuse for their fail­ure to deal with crime. I am con­vinced that crime will nev­er be ad­dressed by this gov­ern­ment be­cause they are in bed with the crim­i­nals. From the very be­gin­ning of this PNM gov­ern­ment's tenure, they proved that they were not in­clined to clamp down on the crim­i­nal el­e­ment that was un­leashed dur­ing the 2001 elec­tion cam­paign against UNC sup­port­ers. We saw the PM's fail­ure to con­demn Cro Cro's re­pug­nant and atro­cious com­po­si­tion en­ti­tled "Face Re­al­i­ty" which called on crim­i­nals to kid­nap wealthy busi­ness per­sons. We saw a gov­ern­ment. There is a Latin say­ing "Abyssus abyssum in­vo­cat" which means "Hell calls hell." How ap­pro­pri­ate in these cir­cum­stances when we have an ar­ro­gant and heart­less gov­ern­ment pre­sid­ing over the worst reign of ter­ror in the his­to­ry of this na­tion. Mr Speak­er the pol­i­cy of this Gov­ern­ment in the face of every cri­sis that they have cre­at­ed and ex­ac­er­bat­ed has been: ex­cus­es, de­nials, pro­pa­gan­da and pass­ing the blame.

Over the past sev­en years the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter have blamed every­one and every­thing for the spate of crime. They blamed the UNC, they blamed Venezuela, the blamed drugs, the cit­i­zen­ry, tele­vi­sion, par­ent­ing, gangs, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and so on and so on. They placed the blame every­where ex­cept where it be­longs–at the feet of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and his boss, the Prime Min­is­ter. I sat here and cringed when I heard the Min­is­ter de­clare

"We will not waiv­er from our ze­ro tol­er­ance pos­ture against crime"

What ze­ro tol­er­ance? Mr Speak­er? For the past sev­en years the gov­ern­ment has bent over back­wards to ac­com­mo­date the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in this coun­try, el­e­vat­ing them to com­mu­ni­ty leader sta­tus, and re­ward­ing them with high pay­ing gov­ern­ment con­tracts and jobs. Mr Speak­er over the last sev­en years we have had Chin Lee, Mar­tin Joseph, Mas­trof­s­ki, Maguire, Snipes, Jon B.Gould, Steve Hen­ry, Cameron Ross, Hilton Guy, Snag­gs, Trevor Paul, James Philbert, Ana­con­da, Bagh­dad, Weed and Seed, Polic­ing for peo­ple, Strate­gic Con­trol Sem­i­nars, Com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, po­lice re­form leg­is­la­tion, po­lice ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion, mod­el sta­tions, com­mu­ni­ty leader truce sign­ing, gang sup­pres­sion, crime sup­pres­sion unit, an­ti kid­nap­ping squad, area lock­downs, mo­bile posts, crime and jus­tice com­mis­sion, in­ter agency task force, SAUTT, Scot­land Yard, Penn State Jus­tice and Safe­ty In­sti­tute, George Ma­son uni­ver­si­ty, Is­rael­li Radar, Blimps, Eye in the sky, next blimp, high speed in­ter­cep­tors, he­li­copters, off­shore pa­trol ves­sels and Fast Pa­trol boats, cars, jeeps, mo­tor bikes, bi­cy­cles, body ar­mor, crowd con­trol train­ing, wa­ter can­nons, we had crime con­sul­ta­tions aplen­ty, we even had an Or­ches­tra and so many oth­er ini­tia­tives...and every­one has failed.

Ze­ro tol­er­ance?

I won­der just who the Hon­or­able Min­is­ter of Fi­nance thinks she is fool­ing. They have been say­ing that since 2003! T&T is un­der siege from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. De­spite the mul­ti­ple as­sur­ances from Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, I do not think there is any­one in this coun­try that has not been af­fect­ed by crime, in­clud­ing mem­bers op­po­site. But Mr Speak­er, in­stead of con­fronting the prob­lem of crime head on, the Gov­ern­ment re­sort­ed to pub­lic re­la­tions, catch phras­es and mean­ing­less buzz words.

Cor­rup­tion

A con­cerned Abra­ham Lin­coln said:

"I see in the near fu­ture a cri­sis ap­proach­ing that un­nerves me and caus­es me to trem­ble for the safe­ty of my coun­try. Cor­po­ra­tions have been en­throned, an era of cor­rup­tion in high places will fol­low, and the mon­ey-pow­er of the coun­try will en­deav­or to pro­long it's reign by work­ing up­on the prej­u­dices of the peo­ple un­til the wealth is ag­gre­gat­ed in a few hands and the Re­pub­lic is de­stroyed." Those words spo­ken two hun­dred years ago res­onate with truth now in re­gard to T&T. Un­der the PNM, this coun­try is viewed as be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly cor­rupt. n The un­eth­i­cal in­flu­ence of the hand of the Prime Min­is­ter in sab­o­tag­ing the ap­point­ment of a Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions de­spite his avowed agree­ment to do so more than a year ago,

�2 the fail­ure to ap­point a So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al for sev­er­al years,

�2 the sab­o­tage of the ap­point­ment of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion so that the Gov­ern­ment could have hand­picked as their choice a man who had failed the poly­graph test,

�2 The un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed at­tack on a sit­ting Chief Jus­tice based on friv­o­lous charges and the fail­ure to pe­nal­ize the Chief Mag­is­trate for his part in the process

�2 The in­ces­tu­ous in­volve­ment of this very Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in the multi­bil­lion dol­lar CL Fi­nan­cial bailout in which the Min­is­ter's ac­tions were re­vealed to be at the very least un­eth­i­cal and very like­ly cor­rupt, and fact that de­spite this com­plic­i­ty, the Min­is­ter has up to to­day not been the sub­ject of a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

�2 The re­fusal of the gov­ern­ment to en­act the draft pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy

�2 The fail­ure of Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters to an­swer ques­tions posed in Par­lia­ment

�2 The re­peat­ed fail­ure of any of nu­mer­ous spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­nies es­tab­lished by this Gov­ern­ment to re­port to Par­lia­ment on the mil­lions ex­pend­ed by them.

All these point to a con­cert­ed, de­lib­er­ate and or­ches­trat­ed plot by per­sons oc­cu­py­ing very high po­lit­i­cal of­fice in gov­ern­ment to avoid trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty. It is state sanc­tioned cor­rup­tion. The well known cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion in­dex, here­after re­ferred to as the CPI, es­tab­lished by the Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al mea­sures the ex­tent of the abuse of pub­lic of­fice for pri­vate gain and there­fore the de­gree to which busi­ness­men and an­a­lysts be­lieve that a coun­try is cor­rupt. Mr Speak­er, for clar­i­fi­ca­tion the high­er the in­dex, the more cor­rupt the coun­try's politi­cians and pub­lic of­fi­cials are be­lieved to be. In 2001, un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment, the CPI ranked T&T at 31st in the world. When the PNM as­sumed of­fice in 2002, they met an in­dex rank­ing of 33. With­in one year of the PNM, the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion sky­rock­et­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly by ten places to 43rd place and it has been ris­ing steadi­ly since, ev­i­denc­ing a pub­lic per­cep­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly that cor­rup­tion is be­com­ing en­dem­ic un­der the PNM. The da­ta re­veals that in six years of PNM gov­er­nance from 2002 to 2008, dur­ing which time this coun­try had the high­est ever in­come, the preva­lence of cor­rup­tion pushed this coun­tries rank­ing from 33rd un­der the UNC to a mas­sive 72nd place in 2008, a leap of 39 places! And this does not take in­to the rev­e­la­tions of the UFF in­quiry which un­earthed ev­i­dence of mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the state sec­tor.

The 2009 Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex is due to be re­leased very soon and I have no doubt that once more, this coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age will take an­oth­er beat­ing as PNM cor­rup­tion push­es this coun­try fur­ther down. Mr Speak­er, the ac­tions of this gov­ern­ment re­veal its dis­dain for the pop­u­la­tion, and its flip­pan­cy in deal­ing with cit­i­zen's ques­tions about its ex­pen­di­ture of tax­pay­er's mon­ey. It is as if the Prime Min­is­ter and his co­horts be­lieve that the trea­sury is their per­son­al bank ac­count for which they do not need to ac­count to the peo­ple. It be­longs to the peo­ple of T&T and they have a RIGHT to know what you are do­ing with it, and they have a right to an in­put in what you spend it on! Mr Speak­er, de­liv­er­ing the 2005 bud­get Speech in this Hon­or­able House, this is what the Prime Min­is­ter said:

"Mr Speak­er, my Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to good gov­er­nance. For us, this means putting sys­tems in place to en­sure trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, the high­est lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness, eq­ui­ty, and ad­her­ence to the rule of law."

Me­thinks he doth protest too much.

Un­der the head­ing "Pro­cure­ment Re­form" the Prime Min­is­ter promised this Na­tion: "....to fur­ther en­sure trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and good gov­er­nance, this Gov­ern­ment is un­der­tak­ing a fun­da­men­tal re­form of its pro­cure­ment process. The im­per­a­tive for re­form cen­tres on the need for good gov­er­nance, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the in­tegri­ty of the pro­cure­ment process, con­for­mi­ty with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice, and re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments. Pre­vail­ing de­fi­cien­cies in the le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, hu­man re­source lim­i­ta­tions and lack of reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight, fur­ther add to the ur­gency for a new ob­jec­tive and com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to the Gov­ern­ment's ac­qui­si­tion of goods and ser­vices." "Ur­gency" was the Prime Min­is­ter's de­scrip­tion. Then with great fan­fare he re­vealed Green Pa­per on the Re­form of the Gov­ern­ment's Pro­cure­ment Regime dat­ed June 2004 which was out for pub­lic com­ment and which list­ed a se­ries of rec­om­men­da­tions. With a straight face he told the coun­try: "Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new?pro­cure­ment regime is tar­get­ed for June 2006." Mr Speak­er, the new pro­cure­ment regime will sig­nal to the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, this Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to a qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance that re­flects the high­est stan­dard of Ethics, Trans­paren­cy and Ac­count­abil­i­ty in the con­duct of the peo­ple's busi­ness."

In 2005, a White Pa­per on the Re­form of the Pub­lic Sec­tor Pro­cure­ment Pol­i­cy was pub­lished, in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment's states in­ten­tion for a 2006 im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy. Then, as the price of en­er­gy prod­ucts be­gan to climb to new heights and the po­ten­tial for cor­rup­tion loomed large, the Gov­ern­ment recog­nised the lim­i­ta­tions which a pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy would have on their abil­i­ty to cor­rupt­ly award con­tracts to friends and par­ty hacks, and threw "ethics, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the con­duct of the peo­ple's busi­ness" out of the win­dow. As Gov­ern­ment Rev­enues in­creased by 35 per cent in fis­cal 2005 and then again by 37 per cent in fis­cal 2006 the enor­mi­ty of the boom be­gan to sink in and the need for ethics, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty no longer mat­tered to the Prime Min­is­ter and his co­horts. And so the reck­less ex­pen­di­ture be­gan in a fren­zy. Ba­sic hu­man needs were aban­doned by the gov­ern­ment on the al­ter of mega projects. Mr Speak­er, they have not turned back yet. The reck­less­ness con­tin­ues in the cur­rent bud­get. And cor­rup­tion flour­ished. Fren­zied by mon­ey, the Patrick Man­ning regime be­gan ig­nor­ing the small­er projects which were des­per­ate­ly need­ed, and promised and be­gan ex­per­i­ment­ing in mega con­struc­tion. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the gov­ern­ment be­gan find­ing ways to avoid pro­cure­ment is­sues, be­gan pur­su­ing de­sign, fi­nance, con­struct, and de­sign build projects and be­gan grant­i­ng mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies with in­creas­ing re­liance on Asian com­pa­nies. The Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, a for­mer con­trac­tor him­self, turned his ven­om against lo­cal con­trac­tors against whom he used to com­pete, and a war of words be­tween gov­ern­ment and lo­cal con­trac­tors erupt­ed. But like all things un­der the PNM, it gets worse.

The na­tion re­al­ized that de­spite the in­creased rev­enues, their ba­sic hu­man needs were not be­ing met and the ques­tion­ing be­gan. Schools in re­mote ar­eas like Paramin, Rose­hill, Point Cumana and Bel­mont, hos­pi­tals, ac­cess roads, drainage etc all were sac­ri­ficed to the Prime Min­is­ters de­sire for tall build­ings. The "peo­ple's busi­ness" was for­got­ten. Mr Speak­er, You will re­call too, the Prime Min­is­ter os­ten­ta­tious fan­tasies blos­somed in­to a fetish for pri­vate jet rides and his at­tempt to join the ranks of the rich sheiks and pow­er­ful Pres­i­dents of the world when a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar down pay­ment was made to pur­chase a pri­vate jet. That was nev­er an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter. It was re­vealed by in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing when the coun­try had to find out af­ter the sup­pli­er made the dis­clo­sure. Re­cent­ly we had an­oth­er sim­i­lar dis­clo­sure of the gov­ern­ment's down pay­ment for the pur­chase of four spe­cial pur­pose he­li­copters. As be­fore, this Gov­ern­ment does not see the need to tell this coun­try when it com­mit­ting bil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey. Mr Speak­er, when pub­lic pres­sure forced the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er the pur­chase of the pri­vate jet, the Min­is­ter of Noth­ing Works claimed that the sup­pli­er did not want to sign an an­ti cor­rup­tion clause, con­ve­nient­ly ig­nor­ing the fact that the gov­ern­ment had al­ready made a down pay­ment of sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars to the sup­pli­er.

Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said then:

"We are in­sist­ing on the in­ser­tion of a stan­dard an­ti-cor­rup­tion clause in the con­tract where if it is dis­cov­ered that any per­son had some­how ben­e­fit­ted from this trans­ac­tion the con­tract will be void and the sell­er will have to re­fund the mon­ey." http://www.news­day.co.tt/news/0,74516.html

"A stan­dard an­ti cor­rup­tion clause," the Min­is­ter said. Mr Speak­er to­day I chal­lenge this Gov­ern­ment, I chal­lenge Min­is­ter Im­bert to pro­vide copies of every con­tract is­sued by this gov­ern­ment, and by agen­cies of this gov­ern­ment above ten mil­lion dol­lars since 2006. Show me the an­ti cor­rup­tion clause in the $368 con­tract award­ed by UDe­COTT to an un­qual­i­fied com­pa­ny CH De­vel­op­ment and Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed and in cir­cum­stances which have been re­vealed to be cor­rupt. The Hon­or­able Min­is­ter needs to ex­plain to this coun­try what mea­sures were tak­en by UDe­COTT to en­sure that there was no cor­rup­tion in the award of the ten­der, and now that it has been found that the con­tract was im­prop­er­ly award­ed, what mea­sures is the gov­ern­ment go­ing to take to ef­fect the re­trieval of the monies paid. Show me the mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar con­tract award­ed by UDe­COTT to Turn­er Al­pha Lim­it­ed for a project with­out the com­pa­ny hav­ing been eval­u­at­ed as was re­quired! What has been done to deal with that?

And I can go on and on.

Rec­om­men­da­tions

Mr Speak­er, this Gov­ern­ment has pushed this coun­try down the slip­pery slope. There is much that needs to be done to pull us back. In the few min­utes I have left, I wish to of­fer some sug­ges­tions for the way for­ward. I am cer­tain that as my col­leagues present their var­i­ous port­fo­lios these and oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions will be of­fered in light of the Gov­ern­ment's ob­vi­ous in­abil­i­ty in­tel­lec­tu­al bank­rupt­cy.

Crime

1. Le­galise SAUTT–SAUTT re­mains the coun­try's pre­mier tech­nol­o­gy dri­ven crime fight­ing tool and much mon­ey was spent to es­tab­lish and equip it. Yet the gov­ern­ment has not seen it fit to en­act leg­is­la­tion to le­gal­ize the op­er­a­tions of SAUTT de­spite mul­ti­ple as­sur­ances over the past two years that the leg­is­la­tion was com­ing soon.

2. More Judges and Mag­is­trates and sup­port Staff–the Law as­so­ci­a­tion told us that we could not deal with the mas­sive back­load of cas­es un­less there was greater num­bers of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers to deal with them. This will al­so ex­pe­dite cas­es and pre­vent jus­tice from be­ing de­layed–and the prob­lem of re­peat of­fend­ers mak­ing bail and com­mit­ting more crimes while await­ing tri­al–not to men­tion the cost to the tax­pay­er of keep­ing per­sons await­ing tri­al, in jail.

3. Com­put­erise po­lice, court, li­cens­ing di­vi­sion–so that po­lice of­fi­cers in ve­hi­cles can have ac­cess to crim­i­nal records, war­rants etc at the touch of a but­ton– per­haps with lap­tops in po­lice cars as ex­ists in the US (Dade Coun­ty, Mi­a­mi)

4. Es­tab­lish a vic­tim's coun­sel­ing Unit

5. Es­tab­lish a Cen­tral Vig­i­lence Au­thor­i­ty De­vel­op­ment of a Cen­tral Vig­i­lance Au­thor­i­ty to re­ceive com­plaints, in­ves­ti­gate and re­port to the par­lia­ment

6. Es­tab­lish a Gun Court for deal­ing with all firearms re­lat­ed mat­ters

7. Im­ple­ment the breath­a­lyz­er law

8. In­crease the com­pen­sa­tion for vic­tims of crime from the cur­rent lim­it of 25,000 to 250,000

9. In­tro­duce tech­nol­o­gy to speed traps–speed guns, traf­fic light cam­eras

10. En­sure ex­ist­ing CC cam­eras op­er­at­ing and in­clude busi­ness cen­tres on EW cor­ri­dor–not on­ly high­way.

11. More po­lice­men. There are cur­rent­ly 1250 short­fall in the com­pli­ment of 7500 of­fi­cers es­tab­lished many years ago. There is there­fore need for in­creased ap­point­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers, with bet­ter screen­ing of ap­pli­cants and bet­ter terms and con­di­tions.

12. Pro­vide ad­e­quate fund­ing for the EOC

13. Es­tab­lish a prop­er wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme

14. Ap­point a DPP and Sol. Gen.,

Labour

1. In­crease min­i­mum wage to $15-$20–a liv­ing wage

2. In­crease old age grant to 3000 and in­dex to in­fla­tion

3. In­crease pay­ments–dis­abil­i­ty grants etc.

4. In­crease en­force­ment of OS­HA in­clud­ing for­eign con­trac­tors and work­ers

5. En­sure com­pli­ance (even play­ing field) with min­i­mum wages, terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment.

6. Em­ploy CEPEP in more pro­duc­tive en­deav­ors in­clud­ing the agri­cul­tur­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors.

7. In­crease al­lowance for ap­proved de­ferred an­nu­ity

8. In­crease the lim­it on pen­sions to $5,000 to al­low pen­sion­ers to ac­cess the old age grant and NIS pen­sion.

Works and Trans­port

1. Repri­ori­tise projects on a need ba­sis, and par­tic­u­lar­ly putting a stop to new projects which have been as­signed to for­eign con­trac­tors.

2. De­mand cost ben­e­fit analy­ses which must jus­ti­fy for every new project to be start­ed.

3. Stop the rapid rail project un­til a fea­si­bil­i­ty study can prove its val­ue.

4. In­ves­ti­gate with in­tent on pur­sue crim­i­nal charges based on the cur­rent rev­e­la­tions of the UFF com­mis­sion. There is no rea­son to wait un­til the com­mis­sion sub­mits the re­port as the in­for­ma­tion and al­le­ga­tions are al­ready in the pub­lic do­main. The DPP as­sis­tant should act now.

5. A com­pre­hen­sive bridge as­sess­ment and main­te­nance pro­gramme is re­quired.

6. A log­i­cal ap­proach to road re­pair–the high­way be­tween Betham and the over­pass is be­ing paved again for the umpteen time in the last five years bit many roads in this coun­try are in com­plete dis­re­pair caus­ing protests by res­i­dents.

7. A com­pre­hen­sive drainage plan is re­quired to ad­dress flood­ing and to take in­to ac­count ex­ist­ing and pro­posed de­vel­op­ment.

8. True at­tempt to in­tro­duce CNG sta­tions and fa­cil­i­ties.

The econ­o­my

1. There is need to stim­u­late the econ­o­my. The best way to do this is to stim­u­late lo­cal in­dus­try in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors. This ne­ces­si­tates lo­cal con­trac­tors to be em­ployed - the im­por­tance if in­ter­nal cir­cu­la­tion of the in­vest­ment as op­posed to ex­ter­nal mi­gra­tion of the re­sources as­signed to stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

2. EX­IM bank / ADB� in­crease al­lo­ca­tion and re­ori­ent to fa­cil­i­tate eas­i­er and less ex­pen­sive ac­cess to fund­ing for lo­cal ex­porters and for im­porters with heavy lo­cal con­tent.

3. Di­rect tax con­ces­sion to in­vest­ment in agri­cul­ture to stim­u­late greater pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment

4. 24/7 op­er­a­tions of the port, and the es­tab­lish­ment of Pt Lisas as a ful­ly op­er­a­tional port.

5. List­ing of prof­itable state en­ter­pris­es on the stock ex­change as a way of in­creas­ing the range of eq­ui­ty avail­able

6. Bal­ance the bud­get by re­duc­ing projects which are not crit­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary at this time.

7. Re­duce the Non en­er­gy Deficit

Health

1. Point Fortin hos­pi­tal

2. Ch­agua­nas Hos­pi­tal

3. Cou­va health fa­cil­i­ty to be up­grad­ed giv­en the de­vel­op­ment lev­el of Pt Lisas.

Agri­cul­ture and

the En­vi­ron­ment

1. Em­bark on a prop­er land dis­tri­b­u­tion scheme to gen­uine farm­ers

2. Stop us­ing agri­cul­tur­al lands for hous­ing

3. Stop the smelter project and con­vert to more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sound projects in­clud­ing light man­u­fac­ture and agri­cul­ture in the area al­ready grad­ed.

4. Tax in­cen­tive for en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly projects and in­vest­ments

5. Pro­mo­tion of re­cy­cling as a ma­jor busi­ness with con­ces­sions.

6. Re­lease for pub­lic ex­am­i­na­tion, the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan which has been com­plet­ed since 2007

7. In­tro­duce a Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad with­in the po­lice ser­vice

8. Link the pro­gramme of the al­le­vi­a­tion of flood­ing with the plan to ir­ri­ga­tion for farm­ing.