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Wednesday, April 30, 2025

No empty promises

PNM unveils election manifesto with crime, economy among six priority areas

by

Jesse Ramdeo
13 days ago
20250417
Prime Minister Stuart Young speaks during the unveiling of the PNM manifesto at Balisier House yesterday. Seated at the head table from left are, PNM leader Dr Keith Rowley, general secretary Foster Cummings and Women’s League chairman Camille Robinson-Regis.

Prime Minister Stuart Young speaks during the unveiling of the PNM manifesto at Balisier House yesterday. Seated at the head table from left are, PNM leader Dr Keith Rowley, general secretary Foster Cummings and Women’s League chairman Camille Robinson-Regis.

VASHTI SINGH

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Less than two weeks be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has un­veiled its man­i­festo, promis­ing “a bold, new chap­ter” of na­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion if the par­ty is re-elect­ed in­to gov­ern­ment.

In un­veil­ing the man­i­festo at the PNM’s Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the par­ty would be op­er­at­ing with­in the coun­try’s means.

“What you will see is us gath­er­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence that we’ve had and to be re­mind­ed, through some dif­fi­cult times, hav­ing fi­nal­ly guid­ed our econ­o­my post COVID, where you had glob­al mar­kets that were hit from left field by this virus, desta­bil­is­ing many economies across the world. That ex­pe­ri­ence gave us the first- hand ex­per­tise on how we must bal­ance and ma­noeu­vre,” Young said.

He ex­plained that the 182-page promis­so­ry elec­tion doc­u­ment was bro­ken up in­to six core pri­or­i­ty ar­eas.

Asked about how he planned to im­ple­ment the new promis­es, giv­en Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to ful­ly roll out its 2020 promis­es, Young, who was in­stalled as PM on March 17, not­ed that there is now a dif­fer­ence in strate­gic ap­proach.

“What you’ve seen us do is mea­sure ex­act­ly that: hav­ing a bet­ter idea of rev­enue and not putting the coun­try in an ir­re­spon­si­ble man­ner. So you’re not see­ing there I’m go­ing to build a new cam­pus or build 100 schools or build 500 homes a week. We know the re­sources avail­able and it’s how we now redi­rect some of those re­sources.”

Young main­tained that at the heart of the man­i­festo is a pledge to over­haul out­dat­ed sys­tems through trans­paren­cy, digi­ti­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven de­vel­op­ment. The par­ty’s pro­pos­al for a new min­istry to fast-track high-im­pact projects, he said, will al­so al­low for the mon­i­tor­ing of ser­vice de­liv­ery and re­duce bu­reau­crat­ic red tape.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the man­i­festo launch, PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­vised the pop­u­la­tion to be re­al­is­tic with their pro­jec­tions and what was be­ing com­mit­ted. He warned against po­lit­i­cal par­ties mak­ing un­re­al­is­tic promis­es that threat­en the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial stand­ings.

“It is not on­ly our dol­lars and cents that will af­fect us, it is our at­ti­tude, be­cause if the Gov­ern­ment starts talk­ing about some of the things non-gov­ern­ment peo­ple are talk­ing about as things to do, rest as­sured that those who eval­u­ate us and look at us in terms of mak­ing pro­nounce­ments on our fi­nan­cial fu­ture and whether we should be down­grad­ed or sup­port­ed, will be in­flu­enced by what is said and not on­ly what is done.”

Prime Min­is­ter Young al­so pro­vid­ed an up­date on talks with US of­fi­cials fol­low­ing the re­cent re­vo­ca­tion of OFAC li­cences, which al­lowed for the cross-bor­der de­vel­op­ment with Venezuela for both the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin gas fields.

“We re­main very en­gaged in con­ver­sa­tion with Wash­ing­ton,” he said.

The six pri­or­i­ty ar­eas are:

1. Gov­ern­ment and pub­lic ser­vice

The ma­jor ob­jec­tives of this cat­e­go­ry in­clude the es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy; strength­en­ing the strate­gic align­ment and de­liv­ery fo­cus across all min­istries; strength­en­ing To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my and sup­port for the THA; strength­en­ing pub­lic sec­tor per­for­mance and ac­count­abil­i­ty re­port­ing; strength­en­ing pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cit­i­zen en­gage­ment; es­tab­lish­ing a Na­tion­al Task Force on Traf­fic De­con­ges­tion and Pub­lic Ser­vice De­cen­tral­i­sa­tion; de­cen­tral­is­ing and digi­tis­ing pub­lic ser­vice ac­cess; trans­form­ing the pub­lic ser­vice; au­tomat­ing pen­sion pro­cess­ing and ben­e­fits; re­form­ing food and dis­abil­i­ty grant el­i­gi­bil­i­ty sys­tems and im­ple­ment­ing a main­te­nance first ap­proach to pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture.

2. Safer com­mu­ni­ties and a se­cure coun­try

This cat­e­go­ry fo­cus­es on the es­tab­lish­ment and strength­en­ing of elite units; ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy for crime pre­ven­tion and re­sponse; strength­en­ing “pro­tec­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty” via leg­isla­tive re­form; pri­ori­tis­ing ve­hi­cle and equip­ment man­age­ment, and strength­en­ing im­mi­gra­tion se­cu­ri­ty and bor­der con­trol.

Un­der this pri­or­i­ty, the Gov­ern­ment pro­posed mod­ernising and up­grad­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, en­sur­ing law en­force­ment agen­cies are equipped with cut­ting-edge tools to im­prove in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, pre­dic­tive polic­ing, and re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Al­so ex­pect­ed is the ex­pan­sion of AI-dri­ven CCTV mon­i­tor­ing and au­to­mat­ed li­cence plate recog­ni­tion (AL­PR) to track crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in re­al time.

Young an­nounced, “We are al­so boost­ing our bor­der se­cu­ri­ty not on­ly with the ves­sels that ex­ists but we are plac­ing an or­der for 12 state-of-the-art in­ter­cep­tors from the Unit­ed States.”

3. Na­tion of learn­ers, lead­ers,

and in­no­va­tors

This cat­e­go­ry pledged com­pre­hen­sive ed­u­ca­tion­al re­form for a fu­ture-ready work­force, in­clu­sive, eq­ui­table ed­u­ca­tion, and holis­tic stu­dent sup­port, strength­ened vo­ca­tion­al, tech­ni­cal and youth de­vel­op­ment train­ing, and strate­gic youth em­ploy­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ial path­ways.

It al­so pro­posed a re­form of the CXC syl­labus through col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment to en­sure it re­flects mod­ern re­al­i­ties, emerg­ing in­dus­tries, and di­verse learn­ing path­ways.

4. Sus­tain­able en­er­gy, in­fra­struc­ture & cli­mate re­silience

This cat­e­go­ry pledges to strength­en en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and af­ford­abil­i­ty by ex­pand­ing re­new­able en­er­gy and green in­no­va­tion,; cre­at­ing “Green Jobs” and a skilled en­er­gy work­force, and ad­vanc­ing mar­itime trans­for­ma­tion and the Green Ma­rine Econ­o­my.

5. A dy­nam­ic and in­clu­sive econ­o­my for all

This cat­e­go­ry fo­cus­es on a na­tion­al land own­er­ship, ac­cess and de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy; es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al lo­cal con­tent and par­tic­i­pa­tion pol­i­cy; em­pow­er­ing SMEs and ex­pand­ing trade and ex­port ca­pac­i­ty; ex­pand­ing strate­gic in­fra­struc­ture for eco­nom­ic growth, con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion; es­tab­lish­ing an Arts and Cul­tur­al In­no­va­tion Coun­cil (ACIC), work­force trans­for­ma­tion for a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my, strength­en­ing sport, cul­ture, her­itage, and eco-tourism; ad­vanc­ing the ICT and in­no­va­tion econ­o­my and ad­vanc­ing agri­cul­tur­al in­no­va­tion and food sov­er­eign­ty.

6. Well­ness, dig­ni­ty, and op­por­tu­ni­ty in every com­mu­ni­ty

The cat­e­go­ry fo­cus­es on the ex­pan­sion of mod­ern, ac­ces­si­ble and peo­ple-cen­tred health­care; strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based men­tal health and well­ness ser­vices, strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ty hubs for well­ness, cul­ture and dig­i­tal in­clu­sion; launch­ing a strate­gic and in­te­grat­ed com­mu­ni­ty trans­for­ma­tion mod­el; and es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al Vol­un­teer Corps for com­mu­ni­ty sup­port.

2025 General Election


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