CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP), Phillip Alexan­der, says the Bud­get last year al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing for cer­tain things and should be­gin this time around with de­tailed ac­count­ing for what was done with that mon­ey be­fore an­oth­er Bud­get is read.

In a state­ment re­spond­ing to the an­nounce­ment of Oc­to­ber 2nd as Bud­get Day, Alexan­der said:

“The tax­pay­ing cit­i­zen­ry are against the wall and fur­ther tax­es are be­ing con­tem­plat­ed and piled on an al­ready weary pop­u­la­tion. To whom do the pub­lic turn for facts to guide their opin­ion on what is be­ing done with their mon­ey? Are our tax­es fair­ly col­lect­ed and ex­pend­ed? Are there ways to work with ex­ist­ing in­comes or even less? The state spend­ing es­sen­tial funds on tiling side­walks on Ari­api­ta Av­enue has to be a sol­id ex­am­ple of a fool’s er­rand. Where is the ex­pect­ed re­turn on this in­vest­ment?”

Alexan­der said the Bud­get should be fo­cused al­most sole­ly on the so­cial ar­chi­tec­ture and stew­ard­ing of the econ­o­my, safe­guard­ing the so­ci­ety, and cre­at­ing hope and op­por­tu­ni­ty for all.

“If the gov­ern­ment has a plan for the peo­ple, then the bud­get is the tool by which that plan is ex­e­cut­ed,” the PEP leader ar­gues.

“What ex­act­ly is the cur­rent gov­ern­ment’s plan for the peo­ple? How is the bud­get go­ing to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of small busi­ness­es or as­sist ex­ist­ing small busi­ness­es to grow in­to large ones, gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment and con­tribut­ing to the tax bas­ket?” he asked.  “What is the plan to get the mass of per­sons de­pen­dent on make work schemes and hand­outs re­de­vel­oped in­to func­tion­al, in­de­pen­dent con­tribut­ing cit­i­zens, there­by re­duc­ing one of the largest bur­dens on the tax­pay­ers?”

He al­so ques­tioned whether there was a plan to use tax­a­tion and leg­is­la­tion to wean the so­ci­ety away from the high­ly processed, sug­ar and fat heavy di­et, “that has us as one of the lead­ing coun­tries for pre­ventable lifestyle ill­ness­es such as di­a­betes, heart dis­ease and stroke?”

“Wouldn’t such a plan save lives, save for­eign ex­change, keep cit­i­zens con­tribut­ing longer, and re­move a sig­nif­i­cant tax bur­den spent up­keep­ing the health sec­tor to the tune of five bil­lion a year?” he stat­ed.

The PEP leader al­so said the bil­lion dol­lars spent de­sali­nat­ing wa­ter ever year could be used to cre­ate mul­ti­ples of reser­voirs and wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties to cap­ture, hold, treat and dis­trib­ute “the boun­ty of rain­wa­ter we get for free each year, re­mov­ing an­oth­er bur­den from tax­pay­ers”, and asked whether Gov­ern­ment had a plan for such ini­tia­tives.

Alexan­der went on to state that T&T’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem costs more per child per term than the two most suc­cess­ful pri­vate schools in the coun­try, with far less re­sults to show.

He al­so said the so­cial im­pact of five to ten thou­sand un­em­ploy­able or bare­ly em­ploy­able young men and women be­ing added to the work­force every year re­sults in bil­lions be­ing spent on crime man­age­ment and hand­outs.

“Wouldn’t it be bet­ter to fo­cus on fix­ing that,” he asked, “so that the tax­pay­ers do not end up car­ry­ing the class­room to jail cell bur­den?”