Shas­tri Boodan

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Kelvin Charles has said the con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment by the THA of 60 per cent of the work­ers in To­ba­go is not sus­tain­able.

Charles said the mod­el need­ed to change and called on the pri­vate sec­tor on the is­land to in­crease the num­ber of peo­ple they hire in their busi­ness­es.

Charles de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress yes­ter­day at the launch of an En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Train­ing Pro­gramme host­ed joint­ly by YTEPP Lim­it­ed and bpTT. The event took place at the Vic­tor E Bruce Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Scar­bor­ough.

Charles said the THA em­ploys 60 per cent of To­ba­go’s work­force. He re­vealed that re­search has shown this mod­el is not sus­tain­able if there is to be eco­nom­ic growth.

He said, “It is re­al­ly a thriv­ing busi­ness sec­tor that de­vel­ops an econ­o­my. We have on the ba­sis, that we are de­scribed as an open econ­o­my, have been fund­ing our de­vel­op­ment pri­mar­i­ly through gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture, but you see what hap­pen, when gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture falls be­cause of re­duced in­come then it means that busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty be­comes de­pressed.”

Charles told par­tic­i­pants that they too have to play the role of em­ploy­er as their busi­ness­es grow. He said, “Your con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of this space is not on­ly to feed your fam­i­ly and your­selves but to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land.”

Charles said the THA is tak­ing a pro-ac­tive role in de­vel­op­ing small and mi­cro busi­ness­es in To­ba­go. On this note, he said, one of the steps in­cludes in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion by the THA in this year’s Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said by June To­bag­on­ian en­tre­pre­neurs would par­tic­i­pate in an event called To­ba­go comes to Trinidad. He said this is de­signed to give en­tre­pre­neurs the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors.

Charles ar­gued that be­cause of To­ba­go’s small pop­u­la­tion of 60,000 a wider mar­ket is need­ed.

The THA has in­creas­ing­ly played the role of num­ber one em­ploy­er on the is­land with the pri­vate sec­tor of­ten ac­cus­ing it of crowd­ing it out.

The sit­u­a­tion has been made worse with the de­creas­ing num­ber of tourist ar­rivals and low­er lev­el of com­merce on the is­land.

It was re­vealed that fif­teen youths were se­lect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the 5-day train­ing pro­gramme. Two suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants from the group with fea­si­ble busi­ness plans would be giv­en grants of $20,000 each from bpTT while the re­main­der can ap­ply for grants up to $25,000 each from the THA’s Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment and Labour for their projects.