Gail Alexan­der

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly will re­quire more mon­ey for its 2012 Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion than its 2011 al­lowance of $1.9 bil­lion due to chal­lenges in To­ba­go's tourism sec­tor, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don has sig­nalled.For the 2011 na­tion­al Bud­get, the THA had re­quest­ed $3.5 bil­lion but re­ceived $1.9 bil­lion.The THA presents its 2012 bud­get frame­work next Tues­day in To­ba­go.

Speak­ing at last Sun­day's PNM fam­i­ly day in Man­zanil­la, Lon­don said: "I wouldn't know ex­act­ly what our 2012 bud­get pro­pos­al is since the Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance is still com­plet­ing it. "The bud­get will be de­ter­mined by our ma­jor goals and ob­jec­tives for 2012 but they won't be out of sync with the kinds of rec­om­men­da­tions or re­quests we have made in the past."Asked if the THA would want more than the $1.9 bil­lion it re­ceived for 2011, Lon­don said: "Ob­vi­ous­ly, the sit­u­a­tion has changed with chal­lenges for in­stance in the tourism sec­tor.

"There's clear­ly a need to ex­am­ine ways and means to ad­dress mar­ket­ing and do more in that area, in­clud­ing in­vest­ment and im­prov­ing the plant in To­ba­go, per­haps."He said there should be mon­ey for en­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ments in oth­er ar­eas in To­ba­go as well.He added: "The $1.9 bil­lion would ob­vi­ous­ly have pre­sent­ed some con­straints for To­ba­go but we're look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion."I don't want to pre­empt our bud­get. How­ev­er, we've al­ways tried to be very re­al­is­tic and re­late our re­quest to our ob­jec­tives and goals."

Lon­don al­so re­spond­ed to Gov­ern­ment's at­tacks on THA dur­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Cab­i­net's re­cent vis­it to To­ba­go and Gov­ern­ment's move to es­tab­lish a branch of the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice in To­ba­go.Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was clear­ly cam­paign­ing, Lon­don added: "They nev­er stopped cam­paign­ing. A lot of times the is­sue of gov­er­nance has been over­tak­en by the is­sue of pol­i­tics."But they've done things in To­ba­go against the ba­sic tenets of good gov­er­nance in re­la­tion to the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

"Look at CEPEP, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form is­sues and the THA re­form mat­ter. The rea­son why these things come to the fore is be­cause the Gov­ern­ment is about elec­tion­eer­ing and pol­i­tics."Lon­don added: "Every­thing they've done is to re­al­ly send a sign the PP Gov­ern­ment cares more about To­ba­go than the PNM-con­trolled THA."Be­cause of that we run the risk of set­ting very dan­ger­ous prece­dents be­cause where you have a THA in a re­la­tion with an em­pow­ered Gov­ern­ment, it's re­spect for the law that de­ter­mines things."

Lon­don said Ho­choy Charles' new par­ty would not make a dif­fer­ence to the PNM's strate­gies for To­ba­go.The PNM's fam­i­ly day was at­tend­ed by some of the par­ty's top brass, in­clud­ing Paula Gopee-Scoon, Colm Im­bert, Jer­ry Narace and oth­ers, who ar­rived in the af­ter­noon.The high­light of the day, the PNM's food com­pe­ti­tion, was won by Port-of-Spain South with "Anand­loo," a stewed pork and pota­to dish, "Jack in the Pot," an oil-down and "The Kam­la," a fruit punch heav­i­ly laced with vod­ka and rum, said Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald who su­per­vised cook­ing.