Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed is warn­ing Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of a po­lit­i­cal back­lash if he is not trans­par­ent with the pub­lic about a fu­ture hir­ing freeze in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s bud­get de­bate at the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture, Scar­bor­ough, Au­gus­tine said the THA would need to “pause on hir­ings for sev­er­al years” in the fu­ture.

Au­gus­tine said from Jan­u­ary 2022 to May 2026, the as­sem­bly added 3,146 new em­ploy­ees to an al­ready bur­den­some wage bill. The THA em­ploys over 60 per cent of the is­land’s work­force.

Au­gus­tine said the THA is look­ing to de­vel­op the pri­vate sec­tor and en­hance the pop­u­la­tion’s skillset to ease the tran­si­tion from a THA-dom­i­nat­ed labour mar­ket.

Au­gus­tine said he is an­tic­i­pat­ing an ex­pan­sion of the tourism and agri­cul­ture sec­tors with the im­pend­ing open­ing of the new air­port ter­mi­nal, more di­rect flights to To­ba­go from Caribbean Air­lines and a re­struc­tur­ing of Cepep to the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed is urg­ing Au­gus­tine to share more de­tails about the freeze and in­di­cate a time­line for it to take place.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Mo­hammed said if peo­ple are left in lim­bo, it could fu­el un­rest and give the op­pos­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) am­mu­ni­tion to at­tack the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He asked whether the freeze would in­clude con­tract em­ploy­ees and/or pub­lic ser­vants, and al­so queried whether any as­sess­ment was done to de­ter­mine the cur­rent ef­fi­cien­cy of the hu­man re­sources in the as­sem­bly.

Mo­hammed said al­ter­na­tive sources of em­ploy­ment and poli­cies should be in place to en­sure that when the freeze oc­curs, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for those un­em­ployed.

He said the THA must be­ware of any rise in un­em­ploy­ment lev­els, as this can breed so­ci­etal ills.

He called on the THA to be more ag­gres­sive in de­vel­op­ing and pro­mot­ing tourism on the is­land so it can ab­sorb more work­ers.

“Be more ag­gres­sive to en­sure there is more cruise ships go­ing in, more air­lines com­ing in, that the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the new air­port ter­mi­nal is not gonna be like a ghost town as it is now with once-a-week flights. No, there has to be a dif­fer­ent think­ing and ap­proach.”

He said the TPP must not fol­low “the PNM sec­ond term and do very lit­tle to stim­u­late growth in the econ­o­my.”

He said the glob­al out­look is volatile and a laid-back ap­proach would be detri­men­tal.

IDA: Vot­ers were duped

Mean­while, In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus be­lieves the Au­gus­tine-led To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) was not trans­par­ent with the elec­torate.

The TPP won the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions re­sound­ing­ly 15-0.

“What is dis­ap­point­ing the peo­ple were not told the full truth be­fore they vot­ed. They were duped,” she said.

She called on Au­gus­tine to pub­lish the full THA man­pow­er and re­veal when he re­alised the re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture was un­sus­tain­able.

She said work­ers must not be pun­ished for what she de­scribed as poor plan­ning by the as­sem­bly.

The IDA leader al­so called for a tran­si­tion plan so the pub­lic can un­der­stand and buy in­to the strat­e­gy.

She said the IDA had warned To­bag­o­ni­ans about falling in­to an “em­ploy­ment trap” and said there were omi­nous signs across the wa­ter.