Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An­i­mals be­ing trans­port­ed in­to T&T by sea from Venezuela have sparked con­cerns that they may car­ry dis­eases. Vi­jay Fos­ter, a farmer, raised the is­sue about the an­i­mals be­ing brought in­to the coun­try to be sold.

He was at­tend­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ bud­get con­sul­ta­tion on Tues­day. He re­lat­ed an episode of goats brought in­to T&T, four of which died and two oth­ers were dis­charg­ing green ma­te­r­i­al from their mouths.

“This is dan­ger­ous. You don’t know if you get­ting foot and mouth dis­ease in­to T&T with this; they can lick up my herd if they have dis­eases,” he added.

He said the area al­so has prob­lems with bats bit­ing goats, and au­thor­i­ties lack mon­ey to hire peo­ple for this.

Fyz­abad cham­ber pres­i­dent Ang­ie Jairam, not­ing crime, said lo­cal busi­ness peo­ple were scared to rein­vest, and if they did, “we don’t know what our re­turns will be.”

She said if di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion was not done, the forex sit­u­a­tion would wors­en. She felt the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund was treat­ed like a “pet­ty cash” fa­cil­i­ty. Mean­while, coun­cil­lor Deryck Bow­erin re­quest­ed the bud­get deal with lo­cal gov­ern­ment so cor­po­ra­tions can serve peo­ple bet­ter. He said peo­ple called cor­po­ra­tions for every­thing, but they lack re­sources to match re­quests. He said cor­po­ra­tions have to beg for funds and keep try­ing to catch up.

Re­tired pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pal Tara Lal­gee, who said the PNM was a “failed gov­ern­ment,” called for at­ten­tion to be paid to ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing Stu­dents Sup­port Ser­vices, which she said she was told “op­er­ates like ghost gangs.” Naz­im Awani, a for­mer Fi­nance Min­istry em­ploy­ee, said peo­ple must un­der­stand the con­straints the Gov­ern­ment was op­er­at­ing un­der.

Awani said peo­ple may not know the Fi­nance Min­is­ter has the dis­cre­tion to sup­press ex­pen­di­ture in ac­cor­dance with the ex­i­gen­cies of the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. UNC’s live trans­mis­sion of the meet­ing was cut at that point. UNC Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe told Guardian Me­dia that tech­ni­cal is­sues pre­vent­ed trans­mis­sion re­sump­tion, but the meet­ing was to be record­ed for UNC’s Face­book page.

Sage­wan: Govt must di­ver­si­fy in­to non-fos­sil en­er­gy

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $63 bil­lion of the $450 bil­lion in bud­getary ex­pen­di­tures over the last nine years have gone to­wards na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, but T&T’s crime rate in­di­cates that throw­ing more mon­ey be­hind the prob­lem is not the so­lu­tion. This was the view of econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan, who spoke at the UNC’s Fyz­abad bud­get con­sul­ta­tion on Tues­day.

Sage­wan ex­pressed sim­i­lar con­cerns about agri­cul­ture and tourism al­lo­ca­tions. She al­so said if the Drag­on gas project with Venezuela does not hap­pen, T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor will be in se­ri­ous jeop­ardy.

Sage­wan ques­tioned why the Gov­ern­ment was not ag­gres­sive­ly di­ver­si­fy­ing in­to non-fos­sil en­er­gy. “We have the hu­man cap­i­tal in en­er­gy that is eas­i­ly trans­fer­able,” she added.

Ac­cord­ing to the econ­o­mist, the sys­tem of tick­et­ing dri­vers cur­rent­ly seems to be the strongest mech­a­nism for gen­er­at­ing rev­enue. “So where are we go­ing? If this pat­tern con­tin­ues and we don’t se­ri­ous­ly come to terms that the days of oil and gas are over.”

Say­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor is T&T’s bread and but­ter, Sage­wan not­ed that while it was pro­ject­ed to grow in 2023, it con­tract­ed. She said T&T was cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing on­ly half of the amount of nat­ur­al gas need­ed to meet cur­rent de­mands and keep LNG and petro­chem­i­cal plants op­er­at­ing.

“This is why the Drag­on (project) and that deal with Venezuela are so im­por­tant; it’s the life­line. If that doesn’t hap­pen, our en­er­gy sec­tor, which we’re so de­pen­dent on for half of gov­ern­ment rev­enues, is go­ing to be in se­ri­ous jeop­ardy. That’s why the Gov­ern­ment is plac­ing so much em­pha­sis on it.”

But she added, “There are no guar­an­tees there.”

Sage­wan said the Gov­ern­ment was cur­rent­ly scram­bling for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, which is why tax­a­tion has be­come so crit­i­cal and the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty has be­come so im­por­tant.