Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va – Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says a fu­ture UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion will fund its promised ini­tia­tives by elim­i­nat­ing gov­ern­ment waste and pri­ori­tis­ing peo­ple over priv­i­lege.

She made the pledge at Bhups­ingh Park in Pe­nal—deep with­in the Siparia con­stituen­cy—as she ad­dressed a charged crowd and out­lined an am­bi­tious slate of so­cial, eco­nom­ic and in­fra­struc­ture re­forms the UNC in­tends to roll out if elect­ed.

“We will redi­rect that PNM eat-a-food mon­ey to sup­port land for the land­less, to repave our roads, to im­ple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive traf­fic al­le­vi­a­tion plan and to sup­ply wa­ter in your taps,” she said, prompt­ing re­sound­ing ap­plause.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that many young fam­i­lies re­main trapped in a cy­cle of pover­ty be­cause they can­not af­ford to buy land or a house.

Her speech fol­lowed com­ments by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who ques­tioned how the UNC planned to fi­nance its broad agen­da. He ac­cused her of of­fer­ing emp­ty promis­es with­out de­tail­ing a fund­ing strat­e­gy.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar fired back. “There is mon­ey to pay work­ers; the gov­ern­ment has mon­ey for every­thing else be­sides pay­ing work­ers,” she said.

She ac­cused the PNM gov­ern­ment of squan­der­ing over $530 bil­lion with lit­tle to show for it, al­leg­ing that the coun­try’s wealth had been fun­nelled in­to “priv­i­lege and pa­tron­age.”

Among the projects Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised was the re­open­ing of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and a re­duc­tion in fu­el prices. She claimed the PNM had dev­as­tat­ed the south when it shut down the re­fin­ery in 2018 and ac­cused Young of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic about that clo­sure.

Ad­dress­ing the cost of liv­ing, she promised to re­move Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) from 7,000 food items, say­ing poor fam­i­lies were strug­gling to put food on the ta­ble.

She al­so com­mit­ted to rein­tro­duc­ing free lap­tops for sec­ondary school stu­dents and free tablets for pri­ma­ry school pupils to give chil­dren the best pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty.

To curb school bul­ly­ing, she said a UNC gov­ern­ment would ex­pand Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, of­fer uni­ver­sal free kinder­garten ed­u­ca­tion and place po­lice of­fi­cers in schools to pro­tect staff and stu­dents.

She vowed to ex­pand the Chil­dren’s Life Fund to help sick chil­dren and promised to boost busi­ness by re­duc­ing for­eign used car prices and end­ing abu­sive traf­fic fines.

“We have an eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion plan in­clud­ing growth poles and an East-West Cor­ri­dor man­u­fac­tur­ing hub. We will put af­ford­able hous­ing and eas­i­er ac­cess to fi­nan­cial ser­vices,” she said.

She al­so promised to al­low law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and all off-du­ty po­lice and prison of­fi­cers ac­cess to le­gal firearms.

Oth­er pledges in­clud­ed the re­turn and ex­pan­sion of GATE fund­ing, restora­tion of the school feed­ing and trans­port pro­grammes, and the in­tro­duc­tion of “stand your ground” and “home in­va­sion” leg­is­la­tion.

Fram­ing the up­com­ing elec­tion as a defin­ing mo­ment, she de­clared, “This elec­tion is where we stand to­geth­er, unit­ed, fo­cused, strong, bold and con­fi­dent.”

De­spite crit­i­cism, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed the UNC had a cred­i­ble plan and the de­ter­mi­na­tion to ex­e­cute it. “The UNC sup­ports cre­at­ing thou­sands of new jobs, as we did from 2010 to 2015,” she said.