Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Kelvon Mor­ris has de­scribed as dis­ap­point­ing the $4.54B re­quest­ed by Chief Sec­re­tary and Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my Far­ley Au­gus­tine in the THA in pre­sent­ing the Bud­get for 2024 yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence af­ter Au­gus­tine’s pre­sen­ta­tion, Mor­ris said: “This is a clas­sic ex­am­ple of this sweet-mouthing sec­re­tary ma­m­aguy­ing peo­ple, but at the same time de­liv­er­ing noth­ing. A lot of flow­ery words. But at the end of the day ... it is quite dis­ap­point­ing. I am quite dis­ap­point­ed.”

Mor­ris said the bud­getary pro­jec­tion by the Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion of 6.09 per cent of the na­tion­al Bud­get was un­re­al­is­tic.

He said, “This Bud­get that is now pred­i­cat­ed on 6.09 per cent, some $4.54B. You would have had that as a min­i­mum and there would have been ad­di­tion­al arrange­ments to be able to get to the ques­tion.

“The re­al­i­ty is that you are now prepar­ing peo­ple for things that you just can­not de­liv­er, be­cause we know the re­al­i­ty is the Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion will re­main some­where around 4.03 per cent.”

Mor­ris, the area rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Whim/Dar­ryl Spring, lone as­sem­bly­man for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in the THA, took is­sue with Au­gus­tine high­light­ing the achieve­ments of the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil say­ing those mile­stones meant noth­ing to res­i­dents who are suf­fer­ing.

He said, “They would have raised the so­cial sup­port as­sis­tance from $500 to $1,000. But I’m sure all of you can at­test to the num­ber of per­sons still find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to pro­vide a ba­sic food items for your fam­i­ly.

“As a mat­ter of fact, this morn­ing I had sin­gle moth­ers telling me about sit­u­a­tions where they ap­plied to the Di­vi­sion of Health for sup­port.

“So then I an­swer the ques­tion. What is the sense of rais­ing this food sup­port, if the per­sons who re­al­ly need the sup­port can­not get the sup­port?”