The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will present its 2016 Bud­get on June 22. The pre­sen­ta­tion, to be de­liv­ered by Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance Joel Jack be­gins at 10 am and de­bate on the fis­cal pack­age is set for June 25.

Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don, who an­nounced the date, said a bud­get of $6 bil­lion was pre­sent­ed for the cur­rent fis­cal year but the THA was al­lo­cat­ed half that sum.

Cur­rent­ly, bud­get re­quests to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment are made un­der the line item ap­proach. The fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion can­not cov­er all the items un­der the bud­get re­quest, so vari­ants must be done and the THA must pool mon­ey from var­i­ous heads to meet its needs, Lon­don ex­plained.

Lon­don said for decades the THA has been re­quest­ing its al­lo­ca­tion "en bloc"–in one full pay­ment–so that the mon­ey can be as­signed, which would elim­i­nate the ex­ist­ing la­bo­ri­ous process of as­sign­ing funds.

He said the THA's 2015 bud­get was re­cent­ly in­creased by $110 mil­lion due to the re­cent­ly-ap­proved Vari­a­tion of Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill. How­ev­er, this would not in­crease the fund­ing avail­able to the THA, since the mon­ey was ear­marked to pay ar­rears of salary, wages and al­lowances due to teach­ers, civ­il ser­vants, dai­ly rat­ed work­ers and State em­ploy­ees. The THA asked for $147 mil­lion but was al­lo­cat­ed $37 mil­lion less.

The Chief Sec­re­tary as­sured To­ba­go work­ers that pay­ing them is a pri­or­i­ty and the THA will trans­fer funds from oth­er ar­eas to en­sure they are paid.

Lon­don said To­ba­go will not ben­e­fit from a $75 mil­lion in­crease Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) un­der the Vari­a­tion of Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill, which was de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment this week. He said the 2015 bud­get had pro­vid­ed for an in­crease of 340 con­trac­tors at a cost of $499 mil­lion but this on­ly ap­plied to Trinidad. The THA asked for $50 mil­lion for Cepe for fis­cal 2015 but got $8 mil­lion.

For the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) the THA re­ceived less than $18 mil­lion al­though that pro­gramme costs $70 mil­lion to op­er­ate.

Lon­don ac­cused Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment of en­gag­ing in bla­tant elec­tion­eer­ing in al­lo­cat­ing funds.