Adri­an Boodan

It's time that na­tion­als grow up and take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for T&T, says Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Deyals­ingh was at the time field­ing ques­tions from the me­dia when he at­tend­ed a health and fit­ness fair host­ed by the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, on Sat­ur­day, at the Cham­ber's build­ing at Cam­den Road.

When asked by re­porters if the bud­get re­view was nec­es­sary, he said the lifestyle of gov­ern­ment-sub­sidised free­ness may soon be over.

"The bud­get re­view is nec­es­sary if one is per­fect­ly ob­jec­tive, the price of our main in­come earn­ers which is oil and gas have de­clined by about 75 per cent in six months so an ad­just­ment is nec­es­sary. We have grown up in T&T be­liev­ing that every­thing is free but at the end of the day some­body has to pay for the sub­sidised wa­ter rates, sub­sidised health­care."

"Health­care is free, you can go over there at that Cou­va health fa­cil­i­ty and be treat­ed for free but some­body has to pay for it. We can­not go on look­ing to oil and gas, and look­ing to­wards the State to be this pa­ter­nal­is­tic en­ti­ty that it once was."

"It is time for the chil­dren of the State, which is you and I to grow up and take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and this is what this ad­just­ment is about, hav­ing us as cit­i­zens take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the state of our coun­try and every­one do a lit­tle bit to al­le­vi­ate the hard­ships that we are go­ing through."

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh said there are no plans in the pipeline to make cit­i­zens pay for health­care.

He avoid­ed an­swer­ing a ques­tion of what mea­sures would be tak­en to deal with the thou­sands of il­le­gal aliens in T&T who put a strain on the lo­cal health­care sys­tem.