Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has rub­bished Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s planned Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy and says if she is re­turned to of­fice, her gov­ern­ment plans a Min­istry of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar threw ver­bal blows at Young when she spoke at UNC’s St Joseph eco­nom­ic con­sul­ta­tions at the La Joya Com­plex Au­di­to­ri­um in St Joseph on Thurs­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said UNC’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion man­i­festo will be launched soon, de­tailed some man­i­festo plans, in­clud­ing cre­at­ing jobs and gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar took is­sue with Young’s state­ment of “rid­ing” his pro­posed I&E Min­istry to get things done. She said what was re­al­ly need­ed was im­prov­ing sys­tems and leg­is­la­tion. She ac­cused Young of caus­ing an “en­er­gy drought” and putting “all of T&T’s en­er­gy eggs in the Drag­on gas bas­ket.”

“Ketch your­self, boy...!” she added.

She stressed that her gov­ern­ment will un­der­take di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and re­build­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“It’s not ‘ei­ther’ ‘or’. That’s what went wrong when we put all our eggs in the en­er­gy bas­ket, we have to ex­plore every­thing that can bring rev­enue streams,” she said.

Re­spond­ing to UNC St Joseph can­di­date De­vish Ma­haraj’s call for AI and tech­nol­o­gy in new in­dus­tries, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Ma­haraj, “AI is very im­por­tant and we’ll cer­tain­ly con­sid­er what you’ve men­tioned. You’re push­ing for­ward some of the man­i­festo ideas we have. We’ll have a man­i­festo launch and we do have for the cre­ation of AI, a Min­istry of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence. We have to take ad­van­tage of the tech­nol­o­gy.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar list­ed some UNC plans to im­prove ease of do­ing busi­ness, en­cour­age new in­vest­ment and cre­ate jobs:

• Span­ish as a com­pul­so­ry sec­ond lan­guage in all schools from pre-school lev­el, en­hanc­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es’ abil­i­ty and work­force to pen­e­trate the South Amer­i­can mar­ket’s 422 mil­lion con­sumer base.

• Low­er cor­po­ra­tion tax­es over the next five years.

• No prop­er­ty tax­es.

• Tax breaks for em­ploy­ee train­ing and re­train­ing.

• Sim­pli­fy process­es for en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ances, ap­provals for new/ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es.

• Work with Cari­com mem­bers cre­at­ing new, en­hanced trade agree­ments.

• Pur­sue dou­ble tax­a­tion agree­ments with more coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca, West Africa, and oth­er Com­mon­wealth coun­tries to in­crease T&T’s at­trac­tive­ness to high­ly skilled/pro­fes­sion­als.

• Ag­gres­sive­ly en­hance leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing con­tract law and me­di­a­tion to re­duce the four/six-year span to set­tle dis­putes.

• Com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy and soft­ware de­vel­op­ment as core parts of the ed­u­ca­tion syl­labus.

• Im­prove ease of do­ing busi­ness via qual­i­ty as­sur­ance man­age­ment sys­tem in spe­cif­ic units re­lat­ed to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, statu­to­ry ap­provals, cred­it fa­cil­i­ties, tax clear­ances, and fi­nan­cial ac­cred­i­ta­tion in le­gal af­fairs, util­i­ties (WASA, T&TEC, NGC), cus­toms and ex­cise, BIR, EMA, Town and Coun­try, FIU, build­ing in­spec­torate.

She de­tailed plans for 12 “Pros­per­i­ty En­gine” ar­eas across T&T, aid­ing de­vel­op­ment, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and job cre­ation. This in­cludes a Brechin Cas­tle agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty, West PoS cre­ative arts area, East PoS steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty and To­ba­go’s first lo­cal­ly brand­ed ho­tel.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the lack of jobs is a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem along the East-West Cor­ri­dor and a so­cial prob­lem of crime be­cause of un­em­ploy­ment.

“This will be a spe­cial growth pole to con­vert this area in­to a man­u­fac­tur­ing hub. There’s a high­ly ed­u­cat­ed skilled work­force; they just need jobs.”

Say­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tries can earn forex for T&T, she cit­ed ar­eas from ba­sic med­ical sup­plies, lo­cal low-cost phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and gener­ic med­i­cines, to fur­ni­ture and E-waste re­cy­cling.

“We have to get T&T work­ing again ... there are 600 doc­tors who can’t get jobs, we plan to have them vis­it the el­der­ly at homes ... The UNC, born out of the labour move­ment, is a job cre­ator—we know what it is to suf­fer with­out a job ... we cre­at­ed over 55,000 jobs from 2010 to 2015, bring­ing down the un­em­ploy­ment rate to its low­est ever,” she added.