For­mer Prime Min­is­ter and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, will be pre­sent­ing a de­tailed re­sponse to the 2021 Bud­get Pre­sen­ta­tion to­day, in Par­lia­ment, from just af­ter 10 this morn­ing.

Since the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2021 Bud­get on Mon­day 5 Oc­to­ber by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert MP, the Op­po­si­tion Leader has gone on record with a few of her ob­jec­tions and con­cerns over the Gov­ern­ment’s plans for the next fis­cal year.

One of her strongest ob­jec­tions to date, has been to Gov­ern­ment’s plans to re­move fu­el sub­si­dies on pre­mi­um and su­per gaso­line come Jan­u­ary 2021, mak­ing way for gas sta­tion own­ers to set their own fu­el prices.

“This will on­ly add fur­ther hard­ship to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the Op­po­si­tion Leader said this week.

The re­moval of fu­el sub­sidy has shown how in­sen­si­tive the gov­ern­ment could be. At a time when their pre­vi­ous five years of mis­man­age­ment cou­pled with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has dev­as­tat­ed the econ­o­my and busi­ness­es, the peo­ple ex­pect­ed some as­sis­tance and se­cu­ri­ty from the Gov­ern­ment. It comes as no sur­prise, giv­en their track record, that the Gov­ern­ment is not pro­vid­ing this,” Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter al­so ar­gued that noth­ing has been done “to cush­ion the ef­fects of the re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy”.

“There is no strong stim­u­lus pack­age to help busi­ness­es sur­vive and grow to re­tain their work­force or to pro­vide jobs,” she told re­porters this week, “and the ad­di­tion­al hard­ships that the fu­el sub­sidy re­moval will bring, will no doubt fur­ther weak­en the mid­dle and low­er class wors­en­ing the coun­try’s plight.”

Like Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert MP, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar will have un­lim­it­ed speak­ing time to present her re­but­tal, fol­low­ing which full de­bate by MPs will pro­ceed.