$823m approved for the OPM

THE Standing Finance Committee of the House of Representatives has approved a budgetary allocation of $823,796,2000 for the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).

The committee approved this allocation during its meeting on October 16.

Before this happened, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young said the OPM played an instrumental role in the government's operations.

His ministerial colleagues, Ayanna Webster-Roy and Symon de Nobriga, then outlined their respective responsibilities for gender and child affairs and communications.

Webster-Roy said the gender and child affairs division worked to ensure "the safety and well-being of our nation's children."

She added the Children's Authority (CA) and the National Aids Co-ordinating Committee also fell under the purview of the OPM.

De Nobriga said the Communications Ministry, which fell under the OPM, "provides centralised, timely and accurate communications that engages and empowers our citizens."

He identified the Freedom of Information Division, Government Printery and the Information Division as three entities which were involved in the exercise.

Asked by Oropouche West MP Davendranath Tancoo about a decline in the allocation to the CA from $90 million in fiscal 2024 to $85 million in 2025, Webster-Roy reminded him that the authority received additional funds during the mid-year review in May.

She repeated a point made in her contribution in the budget debate in the House on October 4 that government is seeking to engage the services of a consultant to improve the authority's operations.

In the debate, Webster-Roy said when she entered government in 2015 she "met a struggling childcare protection system."

Young congratulated Webster-Roy on her efforts to partner with the private sector as well as international agencies to improve this system.

She said, "We are getting a lot of assistance from various agencies. It is a small pie. We all have to share the pie equitably."

Young said the government, through the OPM, provides support for religious groups and an example of this is partnering with the Spiritual Shouter Baptists to build a cathedral on lands that were provided to them.

On a $5 million allocation to state-owned TT Television (TTT), de Nobriga said one of the things this allocation would be used for is training of personnel. He added it would not be used for physical infrastructure.