Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is sat­is­fied with its al­lo­ca­tion in the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Roberts said the THA re­ceived most of what it had re­quest­ed from cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

Dur­ing a re­cent post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil brief­ing, she said she had spo­ken with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and re­quest­ed fund­ing for sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty ar­eas, in­clud­ing the set­tle­ment of ar­rears to teach­ers, con­struc­tion of the new Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School, and out­fit­ting of the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal.

She said, “We have re­ceived $79 mil­lion for the teach­ers’ ar­rears and $15 mil­lion that is catered to Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary.”

Roberts said the lat­ter al­lo­ca­tion will sup­ple­ment the $3 mil­lion al­ready pro­vid­ed in fis­cal 2026 and help ad­vance the project.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed the new school as a pri­or­i­ty project, not­ing that $60 mil­lion would be re­quest­ed from cen­tral gov­ern­ment. He said the THA would com­bine its own re­sources with mid-year al­lo­ca­tions to com­plete about 30 per cent of the school.

How­ev­er, Roberts said, “We will com­mence the pre-con­struc­tion works, and that would in­clude de­sign, tech­ni­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ments, and sur­veys. It is strict­ly pre-con­struc­tion work, and in fis­cal 2027 we would get the ma­jor­i­ty of the re­leas­es for ac­tu­al con­struc­tion works.”

Asked whether re­ceiv­ing just a quar­ter of the re­quest­ed fund­ing would rep­re­sent a set­back, Roberts said it would not.

“The fis­cal year be­gins in Oc­to­ber. We are al­most through fis­cal 2026.

“Pro­cure­ment for a mega project like that would take some time. It re­al­ly wouldn’t make sense to give us all that mon­ey at once.”

She said she ex­pects the project to re­ceive fur­ther sup­port in the na­tion­al bud­get lat­er this year.

On the ab­sence of fund­ing for out­fit­ting the air­port ter­mi­nal, Roberts said she be­lieves cen­tral gov­ern­ment will han­dle that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, though she ac­knowl­edged she was not cer­tain. The air­port was of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty on Sun­day.

She said the THA will in­stead pri­ori­tise ex­pen­di­ture linked to the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the air­port.

The re­lo­ca­tion of Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School has been a long-stand­ing is­sue across mul­ti­ple THA ad­min­is­tra­tions. Coastal ero­sion con­tin­ues to threat­en the school site, while age­ing in­fra­struc­ture presents on­go­ing chal­lenges for staff and stu­dents.

Speak­ing out­side the school yes­ter­day, a par­ent who asked not to be iden­ti­fied said a new fa­cil­i­ty is long over­due.

“Since be­fore my grand­par­ents, the school has been erod­ing. Are they wait­ing for some­thing dras­tic to hap­pen be­fore they act?” he said.

He de­scribed the school’s cur­rent con­di­tion as de­plorable, cit­ing ex­treme heat and mould-af­fect­ed class­rooms.

“I hope the gov­ern­ment sees it fit that the chil­dren are the fu­ture and does some­thing to curb all of this.”