IDA calls budget 'punishment, neglect, manipulation'

“PUNISHMENT, neglect and manipulation,” was how Innovative Democratic Alliance (IDA) political leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt Angus summed up the $59 billion budget for fiscal 2024/2025.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert presented the budget in the House of Representatives on September 30.

Responding to the package on the Tobago Updates morning show on October 2, Tsoiafatt Angus knocked the decision to increase by $2 the minimum wage from $20.50 to $22.50 for daily-rated public-sector workers alone. She said private-sector workers should have also been given an increase.

Tsoiafatt Angus claimed although Tobago got an increase in its recurrent expenditure budget – $2.376 billion – “Those additional resources are not to hire anybody.

“Those additional resources are to satisfy the increase in the $2 that they gave to the public servants.
"So you may think it is an additional resource that the THA is getting, but it’s not. It is just to satisfy that increase that was given to the public-sector workers and not private-sector workers.”

She asked, “How do you give an increase to public-sector workers and there is nothing for private-sector workers? It just does not add up. It is either you do something for all or nothing.”

Tsoiafatt Angus regarded the move as “quite discriminatory and manipulative.

“We know an election is coming up, so they are attempting to speak to the public-sector workers and starve the rest of Tobago.

"But those public-sector workers have families who are in the private sector, so it will come back to bite them.”