MSJ: 2020 budget was a piñata

MOVEMENT for Social Justice (MSJ) political leader David Abdulah has described the 2019/2020 budget presentation as a “papier mache piñata” with sweets but which is a “mask” for an election budget.

He was addressing the OWTU/Co-operative Credit union league’s annual People’s Sector Post Budget breakfast forum at the union‘s Paramount building, Circular road, San Fernando headquarters on Tuesday.

However unlike previous years when the forum was declared open by OWTU president general Ancel Roget, this year’s discussion was opened by general secretary Richard Lee as Roget is attending a meeting at Argentina.

Lee said while the 2019/2020 budget presentation is clearly “an election budget” however noted that the raising of the minimum wage to $17.50 per hour is “still below the poverty line.”

“The trade union movement has been advocating that the minimum wage go to 20 dollars per hour. In fact trade unions have been advocating for a living wage.” He also questioned the Finance Minister’s claim of a low unemployment rate saying thousands of workers had been sent home following the closure of Petrotrin while several hundred more had been retrenched from UTT and TSTT.

Abdulah said about 30 per cent of this year’s budget could be found in the 2018/2019 budget and cited the Magdalena Grand hotel, the Point Fortin hospital, the Arima Hospital, the TTRA, the property tax, and gambling, gaming and betting.

He also questioned the absence of the six game changers which had been identified by Imbert in the 2018/2019 budget saying these had not borne fruit and cited the Dragon gas deal which was supposed to supplement TT gas supplies.

Abdulah said the gas deal was a “no go” due to the imposition of sanctions on the Venezuelan government and state enterprises by the US government.

Credit union league president Joseph Remy said the over three-hour budget presentation was a “very long diatribe which sounded more like a management policy report than a budget.”

He said the Finance minister had taken the country for a long ride from the Point Fortin highway to the Toco highway and across the seas to Tobago before announcing some election goodies such as the increase for CEPEP and URP workers. “He bored us for quite a long time before he got on the road to the local and general election.”