Shal­iza Has­sanali

Should the Cab­i­net ap­prove the pro­posed salary of the coun­try's next Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP)–re­port­ed­ly $1.5 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly–it would put a strain on an al­ready chal­lenged econ­o­my. Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an was giv­ing his views yes­ter­day in an­swer to ques­tions by re­porters about the hefty pay pack­et Cana­di­an Dwayne Gibbs is ex­pect­ed to en­joy as CoP once Cab­i­net ap­proves the pack­age he ne­go­ti­at­ed with Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Gibbs' fel­low Cana­di­an, Jack Ewats­ki, it is al­leged, will take home a month­ly salary of $106,000 as his right-hand man. "Well, ob­vi­ous­ly, any in­crease in cost will af­fect the bud­getary sit­u­a­tion. But we are try­ing to en­sure that we can re­turn to growth dur­ing the next eco­nom­ic year. Dur­ing that pe­ri­od we hope to build back the coun­try and al­so build back the fis­cal ac­counts," said Dook­er­an, when asked about Gibbs' con­tro­ver­sial salary.

Dook­er­an was speak­ing at the Holy Trin­i­ty Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Church, Mor­vant, fol­low­ing a ser­vice mark­ing T&T's 48th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary. In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with for­mer T&T Guardian re­porter Kyle Je­re­mi­ah in New York on Thurs­day at Mar­riott Mar­quis ho­tel, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when ques­tioned about the furore sur­round­ing Gibbs' $133,000 month­ly salary, said no de­ci­sion had been tak­en on the salary but that she could not com­ment fur­ther. "I know the mat­ter will come to the Cab­i­net and we will take a de­ci­sion. As far as I am aware there has been no de­ci­sion to pay the CoP that mon­ey, what­ev­er amount whether it is X or Y. No de­ci­sion has been tak­en," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

In ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the church, Dook­er­an ap­pealed to com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to re­turn to good par­ent­ing, which he said was the bedrock of build­ing a sol­id na­tion. "We must be pre­pared to walk in the rain with­out get­ting wet. We have lost fo­cus." Dook­er­an urged the mem­bers, some of whom com­plained of be­ing ne­glect­ed for years, not to fol­low the wrong path and work to­wards cel­e­brat­ing a 48th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary as one peo­ple.

Ex­pect 2010 bud­get deficit

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an says he ex­pects a deficit in the up­com­ing 2010-2011 bud­get, the date of which he's keep­ing close to his chest. "I think there will be (a deficit)... but not as large as we first an­tic­i­pat­ed." Last year's bud­get, Dook­er­an said, was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $45 bil­lion. Last year's deficit was $7.7 bil­lion. "I am hop­ing we could at least get there as well," was Dook­er­an's re­sponse when probed about this year's bud­get pack­age. "We are still work­ing on it. We will ex­plain every­thing when the bud­get is read."