Gail Alexan­der

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is hurt­ing.”

This ad­mis­sion came on Mon­day from Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al- Rawi.

He has, how­ev­er, hint­ed at 1,000 jobs to come in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment sec­tors, promised an app for the pub­lic to re­port is­sues and de­tailed meth­ods to as­sist Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions to work more ef­fi­cient­ly to serve the pub­lic.

Speak­ing in yes­ter­day’s Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment, Al-Rawi al­so not­ed that there were 18,000 peo­ple cut­ting grass in T&T—9,000 in CEPEP and about 9,000 dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers.

Al-Rawi said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go is hurt­ing. Our peo­ple feel a sense of...how should I say... dif­fi­cul­ty, that’s ex­pressed on a dai­ly ba­sis in many places: on­line, if you look at the print me­dia, lis­ten to the air­waves. The world has come and all is­sues af­fect­ing us re­side here in T&T.

“I recog­nise that peo­ple don’t want to hear what’s hap­pen­ing in the Ukraine or oth­er coun­tries. Peo­ple want to know what’s hap­pen­ing (here) and how they think their lives can be bet­ter done.

“I ap­peared on a pro­gramme re­cent­ly with Fazeer Mo­hammed, who char­ac­terised the bud­get con­tri­bu­tions as ole talk and I had to recog­nise for a mo­ment that many peo­ple do think there are a lot of talk is­sues that should be dis­cussed. But I re­spect­ful­ly say, as I recog­nise and the Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es, the feel­ings of the peo­ple of T&T—that con­text is im­por­tant.”

Al-Rawi said the in­creas­es in T&T and glob­al­ly were well known, but the items Gov­ern­ment had to spend on—hous­ing, food ham­pers, con­struc­tion etc– had al­so in­creased.

He added that the Bud­get was an at­tempt in a sit­u­a­tion where every­thing costs more, to shift the bur­den “a lit­tle bit..”

He not­ed Gov­ern­ment was pay­ing $1 bil­lion on the fu­el sub­sidy and tax­pay­ers are pay­ing $550 mil­lion.

“Yes, we know peo­ple are hurt­ing, yes, wage ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing, yes, glob­al in­fla­tion has ar­rived at our doors, yes we have to take a lit­tle bit more here and there,” he said.

But he added he was con­fi­dent of job cre­ation, im­proved ser­vice, en­sur­ing road and ser­vices are bet­ter de­liv­ered and that mu­nic­i­pal po­lice can bring safer en­vi­ron­ments, as that force is in­creased to 1,500 as op­posed to 770.

Al-Rawi added, “Trinidad and To­ba­go we hear you, it’s tough, your Gov­ern­ment is with you. We’re pre­pared to take the lash–we have to! We signed up for the job...but I’m here at your ser­vice.”

He said 700 new jobs would be cre­at­ed in the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice sec­tor and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 with lit­ter war­dens be­ing hired.

“We have rough­ly 18,000 peo­ple cut­ting grass in this coun­try– 9,000 in CEPEP and be­tween 7,000 to 9,000 dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers.”

He said there were new jobs to come as posts of road su­per­vi­sors and man­agers are va­cant—200 in the su­per­vi­so­ry lev­el—and the min­istry in­tend­ed to dig­i­talise ac­cess

On road prob­lems, he said, “Peo­ple of T&T, I hear you, the Gov­ern­ment hears you, the Prime Min­is­ter hears you....it burns us.”

Al-Rawi said the Min­istry’s 2023 al­lo­ca­tion was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er, since peo­ple’s cries about ser­vice were not­ed.

Ahead, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions will be ad­vised to spend mon­ey in dif­fer­ent ways—roads, schools, mar­kets, pub­lic health etc. Some cor­po­ra­tions hadn’t spent all of their de­vel­op­ment fund­ing in the past

He said it was now the in­ten­tion to spend all de­vel­op­ment fund­ing up to mid-2023.

The min­istry re­ceived $375 mil­lion more for de­vel­op­ment fund­ing due to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form and cor­po­ra­tions all got in­creased de­vel­op­ment funds–with a 381 per cent in­crease for Siparia - the high­est.

He aims to rec­ti­fy an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion where cor­po­ra­tions have huge un­spent bal­ances and al­so some $55 mil­lion went back to Fi­nance from the De­vel­op­ment Fund.