Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is cau­tion­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to keep their ex­pec­ta­tions low for the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is set to present the is­land’s bud­get re­quest to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment by the end of June.

How­ev­er, speak­ing to the me­dia last week, Au­gus­tine said the bud­get will fo­cus on in­vest­ing in the is­land’s hu­man cap­i­tal.

But as an­oth­er bud­get ap­proach­es, Mor­ris yes­ter­day said he re­mains scep­ti­cal.

“Ex­pect a lot of fan­cy talk but the ac­tu­al fund­ing will be in­suf­fi­cient,” he warned.

“When promis­es aren’t kept they’ll blame Trinidad. Yet, they al­ways find mon­ey for their own trav­el.”

Mor­ris claimed to have ev­i­dence to prove To­ba­go had ex­pe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant re­ces­sion un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion due to poor lead­er­ship. He ac­cused the THA of fail­ing to ad­dress crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the is­land’s youth, busi­ness sec­tor and tourism in­dus­try.

He warned of po­ten­tial elec­tion baits.

“I want to put To­bag­o­ni­ans on alert not to buy that be­cause when they want to trav­el to their fan­cy des­ti­na­tions they find the mon­ey. If what they want to do for you is a pri­or­i­ty, they will find the mon­ey and make it hap­pen. Ex­pect a lot of fan­cy promis­es.”

Ad­dress­ing the frus­tra­tion among young peo­ple, he said, “Our youth are des­per­ate for mean­ing­ful pro­grammes to keep them en­gaged. They want train­ing, ap­pren­tice­ships, ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, and jobs. Young ath­letes need bet­ter fa­cil­i­ties and sup­port from the De­part­ment of Sport to reach their po­ten­tial.”

He said the busi­ness sec­tor is al­so strug­gling. “Lo­cal busi­ness­es are be­ing over­looked for projects. The ad­min­is­tra­tion promised sup­port through a loan guar­an­tee pro­gramme, but it’s been two and a half years and noth­ing has hap­pened. Our busi­ness­es need more sup­port to thrive.”

Tourism, a key in­dus­try, was de­scribed as “near­ly dead” by Mor­ris.

“We need a strong ef­fort to at­tract more flights and part­ner with ma­jor air­lines and ho­tel brands,” he sug­gest­ed.

“If we can bring in big names like Mar­riott and San­dals, more air­lines will fol­low.”

He cau­tioned To­ba­go against be­ing fooled by tem­po­rary fix­es.

“This ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fers piece­meal so­lu­tions that don’t con­tribute to a com­pre­hen­sive de­vel­op­ment plan for To­ba­go.”

Still, he hopes to at least see in­cen­tives and mean­ing­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple, a boost for tourism, op­por­tu­ni­ties for the busi­ness sec­tor and the re­vival of the con­struc­tion sec­tor in this year’s pre­sen­ta­tion.

Last year, the THA re­quest­ed $4.54 bil­lion from cen­tral gov­ern­ment to run the is­land’s af­fairs for fis­cal 2023-2024. To­ba­go re­ceived $2.585 bil­lion, with $2.298 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, $216 mil­lion for de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture, and $18 mil­lion for the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme.