While 2023 had its chal­lenges for Trinidad and To­ba­go, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said this year, 2024, holds con­sid­er­able promise with a few gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives in the pipeline.

In his New Year’s Day mes­sage, Row­ley said his Gov­ern­ment can state that it greets the new year with a re­newed sense of op­ti­mism, as the coun­try strength­ens its en­er­gy base, en­hances the na­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture, im­proves the con­di­tions for in­vest­ment, and con­tin­ues at­tempts to im­prove, and make the dai­ly lives of cit­i­zens safer.

He said cit­i­zens can an­tic­i­pate that the new year will be one full of risks, even as it holds con­sid­er­able promise, but glob­al­ly, fore­cast­ers pre­dict that 2024 will be a year of “volatil­i­ty”, “un­cer­tain­ty”, “com­plex­i­ty” and “am­bi­gu­i­ty”.

“In short, they say that wher­ev­er one is placed in the world, one may not be un­touched by world events. The im­me­di­ate dan­gers for us are the on­go­ing wars be­tween Rus­sia-Ukraine and Is­rael-Hamas, both with no endgame in sight, and hold the po­ten­tial for wider re­gion­al con­flicts. Cit­i­zens must un­der­stand that those are­nas, whilst they may be dis­tant, do hold some se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for our dai­ly lives,” he said.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed there are hope­ful signs for T&T, where the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice not­ed a re­turn to growth of three per cent in the first quar­ter of 2023, fol­lowed by signs of fur­ther growth in the sec­ond quar­ter.

This he said was led by good per­for­mance in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, which al­so showed an uptick in em­ploy­ment, as busi­ness­es re­sumed op­er­a­tions ful­ly af­ter the deep de­struc­tion of the pan­dem­ic.

“Af­ter a pe­ri­od of height­ened in­fla­tion, the CSO in­di­cat­ed that in Oc­to­ber the rate stood at 1.3 per cent. To our cred­it, food price in­fla­tion fell from rough­ly ten per cent in May to 1.9 per cent in Oc­to­ber. We can an­tic­i­pate that the in­creas­es in the min­i­mum wage, and oth­er gov­ern­ment poli­cies will fur­ther ease the cost-of-liv­ing bur­den on the most vul­ner­a­ble,” Row­ley said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter said the un­em­ploy­ment rate record­ed a de­cline of 3.7 per cent, in the sec­ond quar­ter, in­di­cat­ing that thou­sands of per­sons gained em­ploy­ment, com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

In the en­er­gy sec­tor, he out­lined that de­spite years of pro­duc­tion chal­lenges, the coun­try has seen the fruits of years of care­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions re­alised and he said suc­cess will sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the lives and for­tunes of every cit­i­zen of this coun­try.

But he is still trou­bled by crime.

“In the face of all these achieve­ments, the se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens con­tin­ues to be of very se­ri­ous con­cern to my Gov­ern­ment. The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty faces this chal­lenge every day, con­fronting it with a broad strat­e­gy which re­lies on the pres­ence, quick re­sponse, ded­i­ca­tion, agili­ty, and re­silience of our pro­tec­tive forces,” Row­ley ex­plained.

He not­ed that this coun­try is a stopover point along the drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing route, which al­so in­volves the sup­ply of small and light weapons, there­fore, the Gov­ern­ment has in­creased and im­proved the re­cruit­ment in­take of of­fi­cers and con­tin­ues to draw on the ser­vices of re­tired se­nior per­son­nel.

“We then must turn our ap­peal to cit­i­zens, as par­ents, to guide our chil­dren’s de­vel­op­ment and be­hav­iour, to ac­cept some per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and to en­sure that we pro­vide no nurs­ery or safe har­bours for the crim­i­nal el­e­ment amongst us.”

Row­ley al­so said that the liv­ing stan­dards of cit­i­zens are al­so a pri­or­i­ty. The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment will roll out a na­tion­al reg­is­ter in which it will track the lives of the most vul­ner­a­ble among us.

Along­side this, he said there will be ini­tia­tives from the Min­istry of Health, such as the open­ing of the 106-bed San­gre Grande Gen­er­al and Sec­ondary Care hos­pi­tal; the con­ver­sion of the Au­gus­tus Long hos­pi­tal at Pointe-a-Pierre in­to an On­col­o­gy Cen­tre, with a pal­lia­tive care ward; the com­ple­tion of the 540-bed Cen­tral Block in Port-of-Spain, and new pro­grammes for di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion and a pro­gramme to main­tain this coun­try’s gains in meet­ing the UN 2030 stan­dards for pre­na­tal and ma­ter­nal rates.

“For our pub­lic ser­vants, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion plans to roll out mod­ules for a coun­try-based e-Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment sys­tem to im­prove the staffing and per­for­mance of pub­lic ser­vants. It will al­so part­ner with UWI to in­tro­duce a fur­ther range of train­ing pro­grammes; re­fur­bish and com­mis­sion the Point Fortin Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, and turn the sod for a new Ari­ma Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­plex.”