Chief Secretary boasts of private sector growth

Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles
Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles

Kinnesha George-Harry

TOBAGO House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles is boasting of a growth in the private sector on the island.

Addressing party supporters last Tuesday during the PNM Tobago Council political meeting at the Hampden/Lowlands Multipurpose Facility, Charles noted hen his team entered office, a report suggested that 63 per cent of the population was employed in the public sector.

He said, “So we were saying six out of every ten (directly employed), and six out of every ten by the THA and its affiliates and two out of the four that remain in the ten would have been those whose goods and services primarily were purchased or consumed by the THA. So in a very real sense eight out of every (ten) persons employed in Tobago is employed by the THA. By any stretch of the imagination, not even a stretch of a rubber band, can that be considered appropriate. As a matter of fact, if you do your research you would find out that you cannot develop an island or a country like that.”

However, he said the last report received has shown a reduction by five per cent.

“It suggests that it is 58 per cent. If when we came in, it was 63 and today it is 58 that says that there is a movement in the right direction. What is more important is that, notwithstanding, the employment levels in the THA have not diminished.

"We have maintained employment levels, so if we have maintained employment levels but the ratio is changing, it would suggest that there is a growth in the non-THA sector, so things are happening, as simple as they appear.”

Speaking during the Business Development Unit’s inaugural Tobago Business Expo at the Gardenside car park in Scarborough in November 2018, Charles hinted that the island’s workforce being predominantly employed by the Assembly had “a lot to do with how the economy has been structured over the years.”

To this end, he noted that the Assembly was tackling this head-on as it was not sustainable, adding that the THA has invested in and encouraged citizens to engage in entrepreneurship, pointing to a vocational programme which saw 1,059 graduands.

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