Any al­lo­ca­tions agreed in this mid-year re­view will have to be spent in Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber 2025. It would be good for Gov­ern­ment to ra­tio­nalise the al­lo­ca­tions they seek, in terms of what they are pri­ori­tis­ing and why. It would be valu­able for all min­is­ters re­ceiv­ing an in­creased al­lo­ca­tion to iden­ti­fy what they will be able to achieve dur­ing the three-month time frame and what the projects would add in val­ue, pro­duc­tive en­deav­our and qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens.

I want to ad­dress three ar­eas that will at­tract in­creased al­lo­ca­tion. Drainage and in­fra­struc­ture, be­cause their ne­glect makes our lives mis­er­able; hous­ing, be­cause there is such high de­mand; and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, be­cause Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is every­where now and we want some as­sur­ance we will not be left be­hind as the rest of the world leaps for­ward.

Funds are be­ing in­creased for drainage and flood al­le­vi­a­tion by the Min­istry of Works. This is a peren­ni­al prob­lem. The work con­ceived over the next few months may solve some lo­cal prob­lems but what is the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to a long-term so­lu­tion for flood, drainage, drought, and agri­cul­tur­al loss­es and hard­ship to cit­i­zens and farm­ers alike?

We have a prob­lem of home sup­ply with WASA; al­so with too much wa­ter caus­ing flood­ing, with too lit­tle rain­fall caus­ing drought. Why don’t we look at these as con­nect­ed prob­lems and deal with them holis­ti­cal­ly?

The Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, ad­mirably, was on the ground sum­mon­ing coun­cil­lors and re­sources seek­ing to bring re­lief and sort out lo­cal chal­lenges. But what hap­pens next year or next time rain pours?

Many stud­ies on drainage and flood­ing have been done .And the prob­lems be­gin with our cal­lous as­saults on the hill­sides and cul­mi­nate with the fact that a fair amount of our coastal ar­eas are be­low sea lev­el, so flood­ed rivers of­ten can­not emp­ty in­to the sea. And every­thing in be­tween, from garbage and plas­tic bot­tles to clogged drains, ir­ra­tional build­ing prac­tices, and un­law­ful be­hav­iour with quar­ries, wa­ter­cours­es, and con­struc­tion. All made more dif­fi­cult by cli­mate change.

Why don’t we tap the work al­ready done, and in­for­ma­tion read­i­ly avail­able to get us on a more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and prac­ti­cal plat­form of so­lu­tion find­ing?

It would be great if we could spend the mon­ey wise­ly by Sep­tem­ber, adding as much val­ue as pos­si­ble, and in the bud­get in Oc­to­ber of­fer a three-year plan to deal with a fair and rea­son­able sys­tem of wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion, wa­ter sup­port for farm­ers dur­ing the dry sea­son, wa­ter cap­ture strate­gies in the rainy sea­son, and a wa­ter man­age­ment and con­trol sys­tem each year. If a sig­nif­i­cant mit­i­ga­tion of flood­ing with ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of wa­ter can be achieved in three years that would be re­al progress. Ef­fec­tive­ly done, this can boost agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, cre­ate wa­ter re­ten­tion ar­eas, recre­ation ar­eas, and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and in­volve­ment.

The Min­istry of Works and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Pub­lic Util­i­ties can work to­geth­er on a plan of ac­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Hous­ing wants to bor­row to build hous­es. I don’t think Gov­ern­ment should be in the hous­ing busi­ness ex­cept for the poor. State pro­duc­tion of hous­ing has been too politi­cised in T&T. Let the pri­vate sec­tor build hous­es for the work­ing and mid­dle class and gov­ern­ment build hous­ing for the poor, home­less or un­der­housed. There are sig­nif­i­cant in­cen­tives giv­en for home con­struc­tion, and that means the pri­vate sec­tor is in­cen­tivised to build homes for work­ing fam­i­lies. Where hous­ing needs to be pro­vid­ed by the State is for those who can­not pur­chase what the mar­ket has to of­fer—land for the land­less, starter homes that own­ers can fin­ish, and low-in­ter­est loans to al­low peo­ple to make their homes more live­able and com­fort­able. Let those who can af­ford or help them­selves face the mar­ket. In­cen­tives to keep the cost of home ac­qui­si­tion down and low­er the cost of mort­gages can on their own in­crease home own­er­ship and re­duce the bur­den on tax­pay­ers.

Some $130 mil­lion is to be al­lo­cat­ed for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Very few peo­ple know what has been achieved so far in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. So, maybe the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble will bring us up to date, so we un­der­stand what is the plat­form that has been built and how it will be en­hanced by more pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture. What will be im­proved? How? And what dif­fer­ence will that make?

It is im­por­tant for Gov­ern­ment to spend mon­ey well and to help cit­i­zens to un­der­stand the val­ue they will get from it. It is al­so im­por­tant for Gov­ern­ment to sig­nal changes they are mak­ing and why and how they are go­ing to do things dif­fer­ent­ly.