Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er a state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day, when the Sec­ond Ses­sion of the Par­lia­ment’s five-year term be­gins at 1.30 pm.

To­day’s launch is al­so ex­pect­ed to re­veal whether Gov­ern­ment in­di­cates a date for the pre­sen­ta­tion of a Fi­nance bill to sup­ple­ment the 2026 Bud­get and de­liv­er the mid-year Bud­get re­view - and changes to the Op­po­si­tion team in the Sen­ate.

The First Ses­sion end­ed on May 22. The Sec­ond Ses­sion will be launched at 1.30 pm to­day in the Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Clerks of the re­spec­tive Hous­es will read the procla­ma­tion de­clar­ing the Sec­ond Ses­sion open.

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will be par­tic­u­lar­ly keyed to to­day’s pro­ceed­ings, fol­low­ing con­cern about a lack of funds to ful­fil their oblig­a­tions. They hope the Bud­get re­view will ap­prove sup­ple­men­tal funds for op­er­a­tions to func­tion un­til the end of the 2026 fis­cal year in Sep­tem­ber.

Gov­ern­ment House leader Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day said Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er a state­ment in the HOR. He al­so said there won’t be any changes in Gov­ern­ment’s MP seat­ing arrange­ments.

The on­ly bill list­ed on the HOR’s agen­da was car­ried over from the First Ses­sion - a bill to amend the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) Act, Chap. 25:50.

The bill’s ex­plana­to­ry notes states that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion seeks to ex­tend the time­frame al­lot­ted to the EBC for the sub­mis­sion of re­ports af­ter the com­mis­sion’s re­view of the elec­toral dis­tricts’ bound­aries. Cur­rent­ly, re­ports are sub­mit­ted no soon­er than two years and no lat­er than three years from the date of sub­mis­sion of the last re­port. A new statu­to­ry time­line will man­date the com­mis­sion to sub­mit re­ports to the min­is­ter no soon­er than three years and no lat­er than four years af­ter the date of sub­mis­sion of the last re­port.

The bill al­lows the EBC to sub­mit its Eleventh Re­port on or be­fore June 9, 2026 - next Tues­day -, over­rid­ing a cur­rent dead­line of June 9, 2024.

It’s con­firmed that the HOR’s up­com­ing work will al­so in­clude an act to amend the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act, Chap. 88:13. The bill was passed in the Sen­ate in April and its work was saved for de­bate in the HOR.

The bill mod­ernises law gov­ern­ing ter­mi­na­tion on ac­count of re­dun­dan­cy, strength­ens con­sul­ta­tion and no­tice re­quire­ments, and pro­vides for pay­ment of wages in lieu of no­tice. It al­so re­vis­es sev­er­ance ben­e­fit rates and re­places ob­so­lete re­trench­ment ter­mi­nol­o­gy with re­dun­dan­cy ter­mi­nol­o­gy.

This bill al­so amends re­lat­ed leg­is­la­tion to pre­serve In­dus­tri­al Court ju­ris­dic­tion, pro­tect work­ers’ sev­er­ance en­ti­tle­ments in in­sol­ven­cy/fi­nan­cial res­o­lu­tion pro­ceed­ings, en­sure con­sis­ten­cy across writ­ten laws, and give ef­fect to re­cent ju­di­cial de­ci­sions.

In the Sen­ate, two bills have been car­ried over from the First Ses­sion.

A bill to amend the Ma­ter­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Act, Chap. 45:57. will ex­pand ma­ter­ni­ty pro­tec­tion to in­clude pa­ter­ni­ty and parental leave for nat­ur­al and adop­tive par­ents; and to pro­vide breast­feed­ing breaks. It pro­motes re­ten­tion of all em­ploy­ees in the work­force who qual­i­fy un­der the law and safe­guards their em­ploy­ment sta­tus.

Al­so list­ed is the Ship­ping Bill re­gard­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and reg­is­tra­tion of sea­far­ers and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and reg­is­tra­tion of ves­sels and off­shore in­stal­la­tions and mat­ters re­lat­ing to crew safe­ty.

There was no Op­po­si­tion word yes­ter­day on changes to its Sen­ate team. In the just-con­clud­ed First Ses­sion, Sen­a­tors Janelle John-Bates and Faris Al-Rawi were in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Sen­ate’s Priv­i­leges team for al­leged­ly as­sist­ing in draft­ing for­mer Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh with a state­ment for Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Com­mit­tee’s (PAAC) probe on state phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals ac­qui­si­tion. John-Bates ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion to the Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les af­ter the PAAC mat­ter be­came pub­lic, while Al-Rawi in­di­cat­ed that he was act­ing in the ca­pac­i­ty of le­gal coun­sel to Deyals­ingh. How­ev­er, no Priv­i­leges re­port on the mat­ter was de­liv­ered at the end of the First Ses­sion and it lapsed.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Beck­les said she would be mak­ing some changes to the Sen­ate bench to­day but gave no word on the fate of John-Bates or Al-Rawi.