Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Politi­cial Re­porter

For the peo­ple who have been “aban­doned” by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

That’s how Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of­fi­cials have de­scribed the re­ply that Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will de­liv­er to­day to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s 2025 Bud­get.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar will speak from 10 am. She has equal speak­ing time as Im­bert had on Mon­day, when he de­liv­ered his 178-page bud­get speech in five hours and 11 min­utes.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had la­belled the bud­get “a mul­ti-hour eu­lo­gy for the PNM Gov­ern­ment’s decade of de­struc­tion...a ten-year lega­cy of ban­dit­ry, bro­ken promis­es and be­tray­al.”

UNC of­fi­cials said in the cur­rent elec­tion year and this be­ing the PNM Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nal bud­get for the term, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s full-length re­ply will de­liv­er a pack­age high­ly fo­cused on plans for the coun­try and pub­lic which a UNC gov­ern­ment would favour. She had done the same in 2019 ahead of the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as head of a gov­ern­ment in wait­ing—as the UNC de­scribes it­self—is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er plans that will give heavy in­sight in­to her par­ty’s elec­tion man­i­festo.

Apart from her pro­nounce­ments on the $59.8 bil­lion bud­get, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has re­peat­ed­ly said that the Gov­ern­ment is “broke,” is ex­pect­ed to cri­tique Im­bert’s as­sess­ment of the econ­o­my and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment. She will dis­sect the ini­tia­tives he al­so an­nounced and of­fer UNC’s al­ter­na­tives.

She’s ex­pect­ed to fo­cus heav­i­ly on what Im­bert on Mon­day ad­mit­ted was the “one area of great­est in­tran­si­gent dif­fi­cul­ty that re­mains” and con­tin­ues to re­sist the Gov­ern­ment’s best ef­forts—crime.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mantra since last year’s Bud­get has been that there is no pros­per­i­ty with­out se­cu­ri­ty.

$B cut in Wasa per­son­nel fund­ing; cor­po­ra­tions get­ting prop­er­ty tax

In con­tin­u­ing Bud­get de­bate, Op­po­si­tion speak­ers are al­so ex­pect­ed to talk about the $182,984,745 cut in WASA’s per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture al­lo­ca­tion for 2025.

This is in­di­cat­ed in the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue and Ex­pen­di­ture for Statu­to­ry Boards and sim­i­lar bod­ies re­port. This was among Bud­get 2025 doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

The sum­ma­ry for WASA’s per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture gave the es­ti­mate for 2024 as $3.5 bil­lion. The es­ti­mate for 2025 is $3.3 bil­lion. Salaries, wages, al­lowances and over­time lev­els are all low­er for 2025 than 2024.

The re­port al­so con­firmed that the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will all re­ceive prop­er­ty tax sums out of the $125 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax to be col­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in 2025.

For 2025, the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry will be de­creas­ing trans­fers to nine of the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions—PoS, San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma, Ma­yaro, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co, San Juan/Laven­tille, Diego Mar­tin and Pe­nal/Debe.

San Juan/Laven­tille got the largest cut —by $4,030,000—from $178.7 mil­lion for 2024 to $174.7 mil­lion in 2025.

The min­istry will al­so in­crease trans­fers to five cor­po­ra­tions—Point Fortin, Ch­agua­nas, San­gre Grande, Siparia and Princes Town. Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro’s al­lo­ca­tion re­mains the same.

All cor­po­ra­tions will al­so re­ceive re­duced 2025 de­vel­op­ment fund­ing, rang­ing from a max­i­mum of $5 mil­lion less to $1 mil­lion less.

Among the prop­er­ty tax amounts to be al­lo­cat­ed to cor­po­ra­tions in 2025, Ch­agua­nas and Diego Mar­tin cor­po­ra­tions will get the largest - $11.5 mil­lion each.

Ari­ma, Point Fortin, San­gre Grande, Ma­yaro, Siparia and Princes Town cor­po­ra­tions will get the low­est—$7.150 mil­lion each. The re­port list­ed prop­er­ty tax sums for the fol­low­ing: PoS ($7.2m); San Fer­nan­do ($9.8m); Ari­ma ($7.1m); Point Fortin ($7.1m); Ch­agua­nas ($11.5m); Diego Mar­tin $11.5m); San Juan/Laven­tille ($9.8m); Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co $11.1m); San­gre Grande ($7.150m) Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro ($11.2m); Ma­yaro- Rio Claro ($7.150m), Siparia ($7.150m); Pe­nal/Debe ($9.8m); Princes Town ($7.150m).

Al­lo­ca­tions for the op­er­a­tion of dis­trict of­fices for coun­cil­lors re­main the same re­spec­tive­ly as the al­lo­ca­tions for 2024. There had been is­sues with rental pay­ments in the past in some UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions.