CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day ac­cused the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment of with­hold­ing $139 mil­lion of its bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions over the past five years.

Speak­ing dur­ing a THA sit­ting, Au­gus­tine re­ferred to the mon­ey he said was legal­ly al­lo­cat­ed and ap­proved but de­lib­er­ate­ly with­held from To­ba­go by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment over the years.

“Just like the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try, ah doh like meh mon­ey to sleep out!” Au­gus­tine told the sit­ting.

He said he had ini­ti­at­ed an ex­er­cise where he asked his ac­count­ing of­fi­cers to check the short­fall of al­lo­ca­tions to the THA dat­ing back to the 2016/2017 fis­cal year.

In pre­sent­ing the find­ings, the Chief Sec­re­tary said in the fis­cal year 2016/2017, there was a short­fall of $56.57 mil­lion; in 2017/2018 $32.8m; in 2018/2019 $16.2m; in 2019/2020 $25.1 and in 2020/2021, $8m.

“Be­tween 2016 and now, how much the Par­lia­ment have for us is $138,925,658...They have de­lib­er­ate­ly re­fused to give To­ba­go what is its mon­ey,” he said to loud desk thump­ing from his col­leagues.

Au­gus­tine said be­cause of this dis­cov­ery, the THA was now go­ing back in­to pre­vi­ous years to cal­cu­late to see if it even got the 4.3 per cent al­lo­ca­tion as re­quired by the law.

“Madam Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, all the big chat about au­ton­o­my and not a mouse squeaked about it over the last five years,” he said, re­fer­ring to the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion in To­ba­go.

Au­gus­tine al­so ze­roed in on the mon­ey that was sup­posed to be spent in To­ba­go by Gov­ern­ment min­istries.

“Can some­one ac­count for those monies that min­istries are sup­posed to spend in To­ba­go on those six sched­uled items?” he asked.

He said while he un­der­stood that there were things like salaries to be paid, there had been lit­tle de­vel­op­ment on the is­land.

He said in the last 22 years, the is­land had on­ly got­ten two new po­lice sta­tions and one fire sta­tion.

“For the last 22 years, Madam Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, we can­not see the quan­tum of spend that these min­istries are sup­posed to do in To­ba­go,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the il­le­gal with­hold­ing of Par­lia­men­tary al­lo­ca­tions must stop and he ex­plained that this can be achieved.

He said based on the THA Act, it was sup­posed to re­ceive mon­ey in quar­ter­ly blocks and this had not been hap­pen­ing.

He said, “And in con­ver­sa­tions with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, he said ‘look things hard across the coun­try if you car­ry it to court you eh go win but it will put pres­sure on the whole sys­tem’.

Madam Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, grant­ed that we have been robbed since 2016 to 2021, I don’t care whether is pres­sure on the sys­tem or not, To­ba­go must get its monies as al­lo­cat­ed. Give us our monies in quar­ter­ly blocks,” he said.

In the cur­rent fis­cal year, To­ba­go has been al­lo­cat­ed $2.5 bil­lion.