Rowley, call Kamla on how to ‘overspend’

THE EDITOR: The PNM is obsessed with tagging the Kamla Persad-Bissessar-led PP government as overspenders.

It seems to me that if you have money in the treasury to spend, then you should spend it.

The PP spent the money on highways, roads, hospitals, schools and national safety apparatus. It also gave increases to pensioners and those in need of social welfare so they could perhaps improve their nutrition.

The PP could only be faulted for overspending by giving million-dollar prizes to the winners of calypso and chutney soca competitions. But that too may have benefitted the arts, which Keith Rowley loves, by attracting a better quality and more and younger participants.

Clearly, the expenditure by the PP was commensurate with the income available to it, and the country as a whole benefitted. So what really is the motive behind the PNM’s hue and cry about overspending?

Perhaps it is upset that it has less money available to spend on paintings to adorn homes and offices; less to buy BMWs for each minister and senator and friend, and less to pump elsewhere as has been the PNM’s habit.

For me, the PNM should focus on planning for which it lacked the foresight to do over the last three years, in order to justify its existence in government. The PNM ought to make a mark not by petulantly attributing useless labels like “overspenders” to its worthy opponents, but by actually using the resources at its disposal to generate services and goods the citizenry needs.

Oh, but then Rowley might have to call Persad-Bissessar to get a crash course on how to do that. He should call her soon.

SHALIMA MOHAMMED, Couva