By Prior Beharry
THE People’s National Movement (PNM) Government has spent $139 million every day for the past six years and citizens still cannot get water in their taps.
This was the claim of Oropouche West MP Davendranath Tancoo in a private motion condemning the Government for its neglect of the economy and failure to generate sustainable economic growth and development.
It was piloted by him in the Lower House on Friday.
Tancoo said, “And when we talk to our citizens… and they realise that this Government has spent an average of $139 million every single day for the last six years and they cannot get water in their taps for weeks, they cannot get a Panadol in the health centre or a bed to lie down on when they are sick in the hospital, when they have to contend with crater sized potholes risking their cars and their lives, when their homes are flooded as soon as rain falls causing financial loss, health hazards and extreme frustration and when over 200,000 of our citizens are living in poverty, not knowing where their next meal is coming from – They want to know, we want to know….where has the money gone?”
He also called on the Government to justify spending $4.2 billion every month for the 75 months.
Tancoo said the Trinidad and Tobago economy has collapsed 16% in five years between October 2015 to September 2020. He said contracting of the economy was also expected in the fiscal year 2021.
He claimed that the unemployment rate in T&T increased by 450% in the last 18 months.
But, speaking after Tancoo, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert said that Central Statistical Office (CSO) figures showed that this was not so.
He said the unemployment rate in T&T in the second quarter of 2019 was 4.5% and in the second quarter of 2020 it was 5.1%.
The finance minister said, “When I did Mathematics in school and it is still so, an increase from 4.5% to 5.1% is an increase of 13.6%.”
Tancoo said by the end of this fiscal year, the Government would have borrowed in excess of $86 billion which would take the Central Government total debt outstanding as at July 2021, to a $104.8 billion – the highest it has ever been.
