Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has point­ed to huge job loss­es un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) watch, re­buk­ing for­mer PNM min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry, Bri­an Man­ning, for blam­ing his (Tan­coo’s) poli­cies for caus­ing T&T’s un­em­ploy­ment cri­sis.

Man­ning said yes­ter­day, “The sharp rise in un­em­ploy­ment in T&T isn’t a sea­son­al anom­aly but the di­rect re­sult of failed gov­ern­ment poli­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly those ad­vanced by the Fi­nance Min­istry.”

But Tan­coo re­tort­ed, “He thinks the coun­try has for­got­ten the cor­rup­tion the PNM presided over. Bri­an should ex­plain why un­der his watch, T&T’s out­put col­lapsed by 20 per cent and over 50,000 jobs were lost!”

Both clashed af­ter Man­ning ac­cused the Fi­nance Min­istry of “... reck­less fis­cal mea­sures, poor plan­ning and lack of strate­gic in­vest­ment,” which, he said, had led to “un­der­mined busi­ness con­fi­dence, trig­gered clo­sures, and left thou­sands of cit­i­zens with­out work.”

“The min­istry im­posed bur­den­some tax regimes while ne­glect­ing to stim­u­late growth in key sec­tors. In­stead of fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion and sup­port­ing small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, the Gov­ern­ment has pur­sued short-term fix­es that stran­gled the labour mar­ket. This mis­guid­ed ap­proach has cre­at­ed sys­temic un­em­ploy­ment, leav­ing fam­i­lies strug­gling to sur­vive,” Man­ning said in a state­ment.

Man­ning said suf­fer­ing was com­pound­ed by the clo­sure of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme ini­tia­tives that pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

“Thou­sands of work­ers, many un­skilled, sin­gle moth­ers, who de­pend­ed on these ini­tia­tives have been cast aside, with no al­ter­na­tive in­come path­ways. Col­lapse of these pro­grammes has deep­ened pover­ty, dis­rupt­ed house­holds, and erod­ed so­cial sta­bil­i­ty,” Man­ning said.

“T&T’s peo­ple de­serve bet­ter. They de­serve a Gov­ern­ment that pri­ori­tis­es job cre­ation, pro­tects work­ers and in­vests in sus­tain­able in­dus­tries. Un­til the Fi­nance Min­istry and its hope­less min­is­ters change course, un­em­ploy­ment will re­main a painful re­minder of failed lead­er­ship and bro­ken promis­es. When UNC wins ... What a joke!”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Tan­coo said, “Bri­an was a colos­sal fail­ure as a ju­nior min­is­ter. His in­abil­i­ty to un­der­stand ba­sic eco­nom­ics, much less fis­cal and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, is ob­vi­ous every time he opens his mouth. That’s why none of the for­mer prime min­is­ters saw any val­ue in mak­ing him fi­nance min­is­ter, or even hav­ing him act as min­is­ter. He made no con­tri­bu­tion when in gov­ern­ment and has noth­ing to add to any na­tion­al dis­course.

“Bri­an should ex­plain why un­der his watch, bil­lions were bor­rowed but bil­lions more left ow­ing to sup­pli­ers of goods and ser­vices and even or­di­nary cit­i­zens. There was run­away crime, neg­a­tive in­vest­ment flows, a weak­ened cur­ren­cy and the in­dis­putable fact of mas­sive cor­rup­tion es­ti­mat­ed at al­most ten per cent of the an­nu­al bud­get in one year.”

Tan­coo added, “The UNC is re­build­ing T&T. No amount of mis­di­rec­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion from Bri­an or his col­leagues will dis­tract us. This Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment—we’ve been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress. Don’t be mis­led by those who, when they were in of­fice, on­ly fo­cused on feed­ing their friends, fam­i­lies and fi­nanciers—and now con­tin­ue be­ing fo­cused on pre­vent­ing cit­i­zens’ progress.”