Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s 2024 Bud­get as ‘painful and de­cep­tive’. Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s pre­sen­ta­tion was de­void of sub­stance and ideas. She claimed that there is noth­ing in the bud­get to in­spire con­fi­dence in the pop­u­la­tion about the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture.

“It’s a very painful bud­get state­ment. Not just for us sit­ting in the very cold cham­ber, but for those of us cit­i­zens be­cause it didn’t touch on re­al­i­ty as to what is the state of our na­tion.

“This horse is not starv­ing. This horse is dead. Every per­son in this coun­try is suf­fer­ing–the poor and the vul­ner­a­ble, the work­ing class, mid­dle class­es have all been dec­i­mat­ed … Where is the crime plan? Where is the eco­nom­ic plan?” she said dur­ing a post-bud­get press con­fer­ence at the Red House yes­ter­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ‘on­ly’ in­crease the min­i­mum wage by $3 to $20.50 an hour. She claimed that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to take the min­i­mum wage up to $19.50 an hour, but changed its mind fol­low­ing a pub­lic back­lash over the week­end to me­dia re­ports of a $2 in­crease.

“Peo­ple who are earn­ing the min­i­mum wage are re­al­ly scrap­ing the bar­rel. They are re­al­ly suf­fer­ing. They are in­creas­ing this min­i­mum wage to $20.50, it’s not enough.

“Peo­ple are ask­ing about the cost of liv­ing. I had called for a more sus­tain­able min­i­mum wage. I am very dis­ap­point­ed that the min­is­ter didn’t take the min­i­mum wage high­er than $25. I al­so called for the re­moval of VAT from some items,” the for­mer prime min­is­ter said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar laughed off Im­bert’s claim that un­em­ploy­ment was on the de­cline. She chal­lenged him to bring for­ward the peo­ple to sup­port his num­bers.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader was al­so high­ly crit­i­cal of the fi­nance min­is­ter’s ap­proach to crime. She said that the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the ‘press­ing’ is­sue in the bud­get was in­suf­fi­cient, an in­di­ca­tion of how out of touch it is with re­al­i­ty.

Where is the crime plan?

She was unim­pressed by the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­crease the num­ber of po­lice re­cruits from an in­take of 300 of­fi­cers dur­ing the fis­cal year to 1,000 of­fi­cers.

“The num­ber-one is­sue in the coun­try is crime. You pick up the news­pa­pers, every news­pa­per you read … It is the worst thing–the night­mare that cit­i­zens face dai­ly, and yet the min­is­ter took four hours and we kept call­ing, What about crime? What about crime?

“Crime is what is in every­body’s mind and when you do tell us ... They want to re­cruit 1,000? There is a whole process ... So don’t ex­pect any new boots on the ground any­time soon. You want to re­cruit these peo­ple and send them where? You send them to di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions where there’s no equip­ment,” she lament­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so lament­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has not re­spond­ed to her let­ter seek­ing di­a­logue about the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion.

Ad­dress­ing the in­tend­ed in­tro­duc­tion of a school sup­plies and book grant of $1,000 to qual­i­fy­ing par­ents/stu­dents, the Op­po­si­tion Leader ques­tioned why the grant was not an­nounced ear­li­er.

“When does school open? Sep­tem­ber. Peo­ple would have bought their books. When are they go­ing to do this means test and when are they go­ing to get these books for these chil­dren?” she asked.

Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, cit­i­zens are sick and tired of hear­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter de­liv­er a long speech, full of promis­es, most of which are nev­er im­ple­ment­ed. She claimed the Gov­ern­ment is in the de­par­ture lounge–set to be vot­ed out of of­fice come 2025.

“They are to­tal­ly emp­ty when it comes to de­liv­er­ies. Every year he forces cit­i­zens to lis­ten to his rhetoric, know­ing he will not de­liv­er on most of his promis­es. Peo­ple know that. You can’t fool peo­ple any­more, Mr Im­bert … More pain and more pain. Peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in re­al is­sues, not pie-in-the-sky poli­cies. They need to un­der­stand that they can­not fool peo­ple with these poli­cies.

“Once again, we are in a bud­get deficit of over $5 bil­lion … The econ­o­my re­mains heav­i­ly re­liant on a fal­ter­ing en­er­gy sec­tor,” the Op­po­si­tion Leader said.

The Op­po­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to re­spond to the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Fri­day. (See pages 7, 15)