Amid an ap­par­ent rise in crime, Gov­ern­ment’s spend­ing on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty has come un­der scruti­ny.

A cur­so­ry glance at the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­lo­ca­tions, since Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley took of­fice, has been one which has trend­ed down­wards since a mas­sive $10.8 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in his very first bud­get for the fis­cal year 2015-2016.

Since then, every Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty al­lo­ca­tion has hov­ered be­tween $5 and $7 bil­lion, with last year’s al­lo­ca­tion stand­ing at $5.798 bil­lion, an in­crease of over the $5.664 bil­lion giv­en to the Min­istry in 2021-2022 and the $5.227 bil­lion in 2020-2021.

At the end of the Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium on “Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue – The Crime Chal­lenge”, the Prime Min­is­ter said na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, which typ­i­cal­ly had been one of the high­est-fund­ed Min­istries in the na­tion­al bud­get had to be ad­just­ed down­ward ac­cord­ing­ly as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rev­enue streams de­clined.

“What has hap­pened is that the over­all bud­getary process in Trinidad and To­ba­go has been one of the re­duc­tions,” said the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the clos­ing of the event on Tues­day.

This has been dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by the down­turn of the econ­o­my since 2014, which has led to the gov­ern­ment hav­ing to re­duce spend­ing across the board.

He said, “You would have re­mem­bered that in 2015, the bud­get was $60 bil­lion and a rev­enue stream that sup­port­ed that, in the or­der of $ 50-odd bil­lion. The fol­low­ing year the rev­enue stream was $34 bil­lion, and we held the bud­get in or­der of an­oth­er $13 bil­lion of bor­rowed mon­ey. And since then to now, even with a lit­tle spark last year 2022 of high­er oil and gas prices, we have been in fact, deal­ing with sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue re­duc­tions in the bud­get­ing process in T&T.”

These re­duc­tions led to ma­jor cuts in var­i­ous arms of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter re­count­ed that de­spite lob­by­ing from arms of the min­istry that their bud­get should not be touched, ul­ti­mate­ly some tough choic­es had to be made.

He said, “The ju­di­cia­ry took the po­si­tion that in this era of bud­getary re­duc­tions, doesn’t mat­ter what the rea­son is, the bud­get, the ju­di­cia­ry can­not face a cut in (fi­nances), and I got, I think, a six-page let­ter from the Chief Jus­tice stat­ing that the ju­di­cia­ry can­not face any re­duc­tion in its ex­pen­di­ture, and the gov­ern­ment had to say we think that the ju­di­cia­ry is a part of T&T. And the bud­getary cir­cum­stances and re­al­i­ties are, that our rev­enues are just not there to sup­port the lev­el of ex­pen­di­tures that you have grown ac­cus­tomed to.”

He ex­plained that even the 2016 al­lo­ca­tion which tow­ered over all sub­se­quent al­lo­ca­tions had on­ly been that high to ad­dress very spe­cif­ic ex­pens­es which were not ex­pect­ed to be re­cur­rent.

“Every­body had been hav­ing some re­duc­tions. And if you look at 2023 and 2022, you will see the bud­get for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty at $6 or $7 bil­lion and polic­ing is down at $3 or $4 mil­lion, but what you will not link to that is just be­fore that, there were huge ex­pens­es in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. That $10 bil­lion cov­ered some on­go­ing for­ward ex­pen­di­tures. So we couldn’t pos­si­bly main­tain that $10 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

He added that while some may look at the al­lo­ca­tion and may pri­mar­i­ly think of polic­ing, the Min­istry has sev­er­al oth­er sig­nif­i­cant re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is not just the po­lice. They are ex­pen­sive equip­ment in the Coast Guard. We have costs out­side of the po­lice. We have the pris­ons, we have the fire ser­vices when you add them all to­geth­er that’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

He stressed that the coun­try in re­cent years has had to fo­cus on its al­lo­ca­tion to health dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, fur­ther adding to the bal­anc­ing act re­quired for oth­er min­istry al­lo­ca­tions.

“I think health might be one of the few ar­eas where we have not made sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions. I think health is a grow­ing area, if I’m not mis­tak­en. We have been spend­ing more mon­ey on health. As again you will un­der­stand we are still at the end of COVID 2020 and 2021. The ex­pen­di­ture on health was ab­nor­mal­ly high and ed­u­ca­tion has not been equiv­a­lent­ly re­duced and so on. So, it’s been an era of care­ful ex­pense, care­ful man­age­ment in that kind of cir­cum­stance.”