Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has called on cit­i­zens to re­ject what he de­scribed as a ris­ing tide of pop­ulism be­ing cham­pi­oned by the UNC.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh warned that the ide­ol­o­gy threat­ened to un­der­mine the coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues.

He ex­plained, “Pop­ulism is a form of pol­i­tics where you try to ap­peal to the mass­es by fool­ing them in­to think­ing elect me and your fu­ture will be bright. What was the spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tion put for­ward, a $25 min­i­mum wage.”

He said an analy­sis was done on the im­pact of a min­i­mum wage in­crease.

“There are over 3,000 to 4,000 gro­ceries in Trinidad and To­ba­go. There are ever 20,000 SMEs em­ploy­ing over 200,000 per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go. What the mem­ber for Siparia is say­ing is that on pa­per you will work for $25 per hour but the same busi­ness you were work­ing at $20.50.

“You will not have a job or the busi­ness­es will say, ‘I will ab­sorb that cost but take up the price in gro­ceries’.” 

Deyals­ingh said the op­po­si­tion has been at­tempt­ing to hood­wink the pop­u­la­tion by plac­ing its own in­ter­ests above those of cit­i­zens through false promis­es such as wage and old age pen­sion in­creas­es.

“Re­ject it. That will not hap­pen be­cause there is prece­dent. In 2010 when over 100,000 per­sons were told vote for me and I would give you a $3,000 pen­sion, vote for me old peo­ple and you will have $3,000 in your pock­et. Well, it did not hap­pen be­cause they re­neged. They rode on the backs of the el­der­ly, the same way you are go­ing to ride on the backs of the backs of 200,000 per­sons work­ing for min­i­mum wage,” he said.

Deyals­ingh asked how the UNC in­tend­ed to fund their plans and poli­cies.

“The mem­ber will need a bud­get of about $200 bil­lion be­cause every­thing is we will do this and we will do that but not one men­tion of where the mon­ey is to come from. Where is that oth­er $150 bil­lion to do all these won­der­ful things to mis­lead peo­ple to be­come pop­u­lar?”