Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) had 21 years in pow­er and still failed To­bag­o­ni­ans, so it’s un­fair to com­pare that to the four years his ad­min­is­tra­tion has had.

Speak­ing dur­ing the 2025–2026 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader’s com­par­isons about his To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) ad­min­is­tra­tion were mis­lead­ing and po­lit­i­cal­ly dis­hon­est.

“They are try­ing hard to com­pare 21 to four. At every met­ric they use, it shows that our four is su­pe­ri­or to their whole 21. Those are the facts,” Au­gus­tine told the As­sem­bly.

He was re­spond­ing to Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris’ claim that the cur­rent THA ad­min­is­tra­tion had left To­ba­go in a worse state de­spite re­ceiv­ing over $7 bil­lion since 2021. Mor­ris claimed the man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism and busi­ness sec­tors had seen no growth.

Coun­ter­ing this claim, Au­gus­tine said in just un­der four years, his team had al­ready de­liv­ered re­sults the PNM failed to achieve in more than two decades.

He point­ed to the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of con­tract teach­ers, say­ing that teach­ers he once worked with at Spey­side High School are now per­ma­nent­ly em­ployed. He al­so said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion spent more on gra­tu­ity and schol­ar­ships than the PNM did over two full terms.

De­spite those chal­lenges, Au­gus­tine said the ad­min­is­tra­tion stayed fo­cused and found cre­ative ways to de­liv­er ser­vices to the peo­ple of To­ba­go, even with lim­it­ed help from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

Au­gus­tine al­so crit­i­cised the PNM’s lega­cy of un­der­de­vel­op­ment.

“The PNM held all 12 seats in the As­sem­bly, and yet we are still deal­ing with in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty is­sues be­tween com­mu­ni­ties on the is­land,” Au­gus­tine said.

He an­nounced that a new 20-year de­vel­op­ment plan for To­ba­go is now in progress and will be pre­sent­ed be­fore the end of his term.

“And in this term, that will be com­plet­ed and laid for the peo­ple of To­ba­go to scru­ti­nise,” he told the As­sem­bly.

The THA has re­quest­ed $3.7 bil­lion from the 2025–2026 na­tion­al bud­get, which amounts to 5.9 per cent of what it es­ti­mates the coun­try’s to­tal bud­get will be.

The THA said it will not ac­cept any­thing less.

Au­gus­tine al­so told the As­sem­bly his ad­min­is­tra­tion was forced to be strate­gic be­cause of fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

“We were not hand­ed an As­sem­bly with mon­ey in its pock­et. We were hand­ed an As­sem­bly with a lot of dreams but very lit­tle re­sources to make those dreams be­come re­al­i­ty,” he said.

He said while the PNM blamed oth­ers for fail­ure, his team found so­lu­tions.

“And in­stead of lament­ing and throw­ing our hands in the air and say­ing, ‘We can’t do noth­ing,’ we de­cid­ed to make the best of it,” he said.

Au­gus­tine end­ed by urg­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to look at the facts.

“This is not me com­ing with long speech­es. This is me sim­ply stat­ing the facts,” he said.