Duke questions THA's criteria for giving out land, houses

BELLE GARDEN EAST/Roxborough/Delaford assemblyman Watson Duke is calling on Chief Secretary Farley Augustine to reveal the criteria for giving Tobagonians land and houses.

He made the call while contributing to the THA’s budget debate in the Assembly Legislature, Scarborough, Tobago, on June 26.

The assembly is requesting $3.71 billion from central government to manage its affairs in fiscal 2026.

Duke, political leader of the Progressive Democratic Patriots, told members he was shocked when he saw Augustine on television earlier this week, “all dressed up with a mic in his hand, as if he is playing the Wheel of Fortune (American game show), telling people 90 lands are going to be given out this evening.”

He said he was glad to hear the announcement.

“But as he began to speak, I recognised he was really performing. He gave out 90 fictitious lands, no paper, no lease. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even know where the land is. It is somewhere down in Courland, he say. And by his own admission, they are now going to survey the land. But he is giving out 90 lots of land.”

Duke recalled Augustine saying the people were to be selected by raffle.

“He say it’s a raffle, so I expect to see someone turning something or some kind of a thing that has the human element of chance or luck into it. He claimed that somebody made some software and the software would pull the names. He has nothing to do with it.”

Duke said he was not convinced.

“The names that I see called there, to me, it had something to do with it.”

He argued an algorithm (a list of steps that can be followed to solve a problem) can be installed in any software to achieve a specific outcome.

“We all understand algorithms and anybody who is making a software can create within it an algorithm.”

Duke said, “They did not even have the decency to show you the list of names or the names on the paper. They didn’t even have the decency to announce six months before that all who want lands, sign up now, here are the sheets, sign up now and your name will be placed in this particular system and have a trial for the public to see.

“No one saw. All we saw is 90 names come up. And Tobago small, everybody knows everybody. And we laughed at the names. How could that be random? How did they treat the people of Tobago so badly.”

Duke claimed there was no means test to select the names.

“In a real world that would have had to be redone. It is a miscarriage of justice to the Tobago people.”

Duke used a woman earning $3,000 a month in the CEPEP to illustrate his point.

“You are saying to her you could get a piece of land, but have you done a means test? And if you have to pay 40 per cent of your salary, for anybody who is working CEPEP or URP that money is spent long before it lands in your hand because they are underpaid. It is not market rates and is not a living wage. We have given people the opportunity to own land but not the means by which they could own the land.”

He urged Augustine to revisit the criteria to select people for land and houses.

“I want to call on my good friend, the member for Parlatuvier/L’Anse Fourmi/Speyside, the Chief Secretary, to redo that, make it public, do it manually and let’s see how the results will come out. What is the means test for giving people lands or giving people access to houses?”

Duke said while some of the people could be selected randomly, “There must be a diligent means test where you categorise people and from those categories you must drop the names inside it.”