Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Gov­ern­ment will be re­open­ing the T&T Ho­tel School, which has been closed for al­most eight years, says Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh.

He re­vealed this dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the 2026 Bud­get.

“The Bud­get is more than a fi­nan­cial in­stru­ment; it is a roadmap for na­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion built on fis­cal pru­dence, so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and sus­tain­able growth. We reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to the pub­lic sec­tor, our el­der­ly, our youth, cre­at­ing a peo­ple-cen­tred ap­proach to lead­er­ship and gov­ern­ment,” Swarats­ingh said.

“We have lis­tened to the peo­ple, act­ed on da­ta and ev­i­dence, and de­liv­ered mea­sures in this bud­get and de­liv­ered pro­grammes with­in the Pub­lic Sec­tor Im­prove­ment Plan, to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for the peo­ple.

“We must, how­ev­er, recog­nise that trans­for­ma­tion does not hap­pen overnight, but we are lay­ing firm foun­da­tions.”

Swarats­ingh said the sit­u­a­tion with the Ho­tel School was a trav­es­ty. He said he found, on as­sum­ing of­fice, that it was not on­ly closed but had been moth­balled for the last sev­en or eight years.

“That Ho­tel School used to pro­duce about 700 grad­u­ates every year. Even as we talk about mov­ing to­wards a greater fo­cus on tourism, it is a sad re­al­i­ty that it is left to this Gov­ern­ment to now re­open that school to pre­pare our cit­i­zens to get jobs in the ser­vice and tourism sec­tor—an­oth­er brave de­ci­sion this Gov­ern­ment has to make. Ac­cord­ing to my friend Phillip Alexan­der, ‘we fix­ing dat’,” Swarats­ingh added.

Swarats­ingh al­so said Gov­ern­ment was es­tab­lish­ing an agree­ment for the World Bank to set up an of­fice in T&T. This is cur­rent­ly be­ing vet­ted in the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. He added that World Bank of­fi­cials are com­ing to T&T this month to have the agree­ment com­plet­ed.

Swarats­ingh was crit­i­cal of any­one who crit­i­cised or de­val­ued the Bud­get mea­sures on the NIB.

“... And what this means for T&T af­ter the Ac­tu­ary Re­port that sat in that gov­ern­ment for the last sev­en or eight years, these mea­sures are long over­due and des­per­ate­ly need­ed giv­en our cir­cum­stances to­day,” he said.

He re­it­er­at­ed the mea­sures, which in­clude a phased six per cent in­crease in con­tri­bu­tions over two years (three per cent in Jan­u­ary 2026 and three per cent in Jan­u­ary 2027) and a grad­ual in­crease in the full re­tire­ment age.
The qual­i­fy­ing re­tire­ment age for full pen­sion will grad­u­al­ly rise from 60 to 65 years by 2036, he added. In that year, one would have to be 65 to re­ceive a pen­sion.

Swarats­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to re­duce pur­chas­es of gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles to­wards a leas­ing mod­el to stream­line op­er­at­ing cost.

This is ex­pect­ed to re­duce long-term cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture, stream­line op­er­at­ing costs and lim­it main­te­nance ex­pen­di­ture. “This is al­so part of a plan to be­gin to move to a fleet that is ful­ly elec­tric or hy­brid, set­ting the tone for a more wide­spread use of elec­tric ve­hi­cles with sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture across TT,” he not­ed.

He al­so said that a Na­tion­al Cen­sus will be done in 2026, as one had not been done since 2011.