Geisha Kow­lessar

De­liv­er­ing his sec­ond bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, themed Con­tin­ued De­liv­ery in Chal­leng­ing Times, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Joel Jack fo­cused on is­sues of crime and tourism, both of which he said went hand-in-hand to en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the is­land.

He said the re­cur­rent es­ti­mates for fis­cal 2016 re­quired a to­tal ex­pen­di­ture of $3.36 bil­lion.

Jack al­so wad­ed in on Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Del­mon Bak­er who made com­ments re­gard­ing To­ba­go's crime sit­u­a­tion.

Bak­er, who had spo­ken at a func­tion had said: "And I want to fright­en you. Your chances of be­ing shot dead are high­er in To­ba­go be­cause of our pop­u­la­tion size than in Trinidad; that crime rate in To­ba­go, be­cause of the size of the pop­u­la­tion, 50,000, is the high­est in the coun­try."

In re­sponse Jack de­scribed such state­ments as un­found­ed, ven­omous, high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble, a slap in the face of all To­bag­o­ni­ans and pose a se­ri­ous threat to the To­ba­go brand and To­ba­go's im­age.

He said ac­cord­ing to po­lice sta­tis­tics, se­ri­ous crimes were on the de­crease by some 16 per cent in 2014 com­pared to 2013 and a 24 per cent re­duc­tion com­pared to 2012.

"The de­tec­tion rate, though still low, shows steady im­prove­ments from 19.7 per cent in 2012, to 20.3 per cent in 2013 to 25.1 per cent in 2014.

"Though the sta­tis­tics il­lus­trate over­all im­prove­ments on the is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty on the is­land, there is still work to be done, es­pe­cial­ly with re­spect to in­ci­dents of mi­nor crimes, such as in­de­cent as­sault and pos­ses­sion of drugs, where the records show on­ly a five per cent re­duc­tion in in­ci­dents be­tween 2013 and 2014," Jack said.

Say­ing while na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty was not the on­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the THA Jack ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that promis­es made by the Gov­ern­ment to con­struct the Old Grange and Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tions failed to ma­te­ri­alise.

Jack, who de­liv­ered the 58-page doc­u­ment, said it was im­por­tant to ac­knowl­edge the wel­fare of all To­bag­o­ni­ans and tourists.

He added: "If we are to con­tin­ue invit­ing the rest of the world to share our beau­ti­ful is­land we must as­sure them of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

"As we con­tin­ue our ef­forts to pro­pel our tourism sec­tor it is in­cum­bent to treat every sin­gle in­ci­dent of se­ri­ous crime with high pri­or­i­ty... re­gard­less of the num­ber each case must be treat­ed as one too many.

"We must adopt a ze­ro tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for any de­viant be­hav­iour. We must be vig­i­lant in our re­spec­tive neigh­bour­hoods and refuse to turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to any­thing that threat­ens our is­land."

Health sec­tor to get boost

Jack said com­bat­ing lifestyle dis­eases re­mained a crit­i­cal chal­lenge for health prac­ti­tion­ers and pol­i­cy-mak­ers.

The Di­vi­sion of Health and So­cial Ser­vices would im­ple­ment sev­er­al ini­tia­tives all aimed at com­bat­ting lifestyle dis­ease, in­clud­ing the In­te­grat­ed Pri­ma­ry Health Care Pro­gramme, the Healthy Home Pro­gramme and the Healthy Fam­i­ly Pro­gramme and a pro­gramme of ex­er­cise and di­et mod­i­fi­ca­tion, Jack added.

The De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme Es­ti­mates, he said, iden­ti­fied sev­er­al in­vest­ments in health in­fra­struc­ture and sup­port ser­vices which would ul­ti­mate­ly pro­vide To­bag­o­ni­ans with greater ac­cess to health care. Pro­posed ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude:

�2 The con­struc­tion of the Mo­ri­ah Health Cen­tre – $20 mil­lion.

�2 The ex­pan­sion of pri­ma­ry health care which in­cludes an up­grade of the Rox­bor­ough Health Cen­tre for use as a dis­trict health fa­cil­i­ty and the ren­o­va­tion of 17 health cen­tres at a cost of $15 mil­lion.

�2 The es­tab­lish­ment of an On­col­o­gy Unit – $2.5 mil­lion.

�2 The pro­vi­sion of den­tal equip­ment to Char­lottesville and Canaan Health Cen­tres and the pur­chase of a mo­bile den­tal unit – $3 mil­lion.

�2 The pur­chase and in­stal­la­tion of equip­ment at the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal – $7 mil­lion.

�2 The es­tab­lish­ment of a Non Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­ease Reg­istry – $1.3 mil­lion.

�2 Ex­pan­sion work at the Stud­ley Park In­te­grat­ed Waste Fa­cil­i­ty – $8 mil­lion.

Es­tab­lish­ment of an af­fil­i­ate uni­ver­si­ty

The THA in­tends to es­tab­lish a uni­ver­si­ty in To­ba­go.

Jack said many for­eign uni­ver­si­ties ex­pressed in­ter­est in set­ting up cam­pus­es or af­fil­i­ate col­leges over­seas part­ly to de­vel­op their par­tic­u­lar re­search spe­cial­i­sa­tions and part­ly to give its pro­fes­sors and stu­dents the op­por­tu­ni­ty to spend part of their time in a dif­fer­ent learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

"Such af­fil­i­ate cam­pus­es can bring many ben­e­fits to the host ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing tourism from friends and rel­a­tives of stu­dents and pro­fes­sors, in­creased sales of lo­cal goods and ser­vices, in­clud­ing re­pair and main­te­nance ser­vices, and stim­u­la­tion of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase," Jack added.

ICT a pri­or­i­ty

Jack said the In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nolo­gies (ICT) had the po­ten­tial to be a growth en­abler for To­ba­go's econ­o­my as it could aug­ment the val­ue propo­si­tion of the is­land and en­hance com­pet­i­tive­ness, re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly.

He said while the THA was not go­ing to un­der­take ini­tia­tives which the pri­vate sec­tor was ca­pa­ble of do­ing, the THA's first ini­tia­tive would be to up­grade its web­site and de­vel­op a mo­bile app to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion use­ful to To­bag­o­ni­ans and vis­i­tors to To­ba­go to make in­formed choic­es and de­ci­sions.

Jack said three ar­eas in which use­ful in­for­ma­tion would be de­vel­oped would be the Labour Ex­change Bu­reau where or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als would be in­vit­ed to reg­is­ter their sup­ply of ser­vices and those de­sirous of find­ing and em­ploy­ing such ser­vices can make con­tact and do so through the web­site.

The sec­ond would be the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of ho­tels and guest hous­es where fa­cil­i­ties which meet stan­dards val­i­dat­ed by the Di­vi­sion of Tourism would be iden­ti­fied on the web­site with di­rect ac­cess to the web­sites of the par­tic­u­lar fa­cil­i­ty.

"The third area we pro­pose to de­vel­op in con­junc­tion with the Di­vi­sion of Agri­cul­ture is the pub­li­ca­tion of whole­sale and re­tail prices and avail­able quan­ti­ties of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce," Jack added.