Kamla
hits Manning’s ‘love Budget’
By Ria Taitt
Newsday
Port Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
08 26 07
WITH the
declaration that whatever was given (in the Budget),
people still are hungry and “could not make
love on hungry belly,” Opposition Leader
Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday slammed the Prime
Minister’s swan song “love” Budget
which she labelled a “re-run of broken promises
of airy-fairy projects and grandiose plans.”
Telling
Manning she was shadowing him, Persad-Bissessar
asked, “Where is the love, Mr PM?” She
was delivering her Budget presentation in the House
of Representatives in which she gave a recap of
the undelivered promises of the Government. They
included, she said, construction of the Mamoral
Dam and Reservoir Project, “a priority of
the 2004 Budget” which has been recycled
in every Budget but not yet started.
“Every year they are going to start the
construction of police stations at Brasso and Manzanilla.
Yet they cannot start,” Persad-Bissessar
said. “Since 2004, to date, every single
Budget has promised new highways to Mayaro and
Point Fortin which still have not commenced.”
She
said, “Comprehensive Local Govern-ment
reform has been repeatedly promised since 2004.” She
noted new hospitals were promised for Point Fortin
and Scarborough but up to now, neither have been
built and dates for the start of the water-taxis
have come and gone many times. But what took the
cake, she said, was the promise to build Early
Childhood Care Centres (ECCC).
“In the 2003/4 Budget, the PM promised 50.
In 2004/5, he promised 43. In 2005/6, he promised
150 (600 by 2010). In 2006/2007, 150. If the PM
kept his promises, there would have been a total
of 393 ECCE centres, but this year, he admits only
seven have been built and yet still he goes on
to promise to build 33 in the coming year,” Persad-Bissessar
said.
She responded with her own list of promises. Among
other things, a UNC Alliance government would implement
a Home Ownership Saving Plan for first-time home
owners earning less than $4,000, matching loan
payments dollar-for-dollar, implement an Earned
Income Tax Credit to take monthly salaries up to
$3,000; take the police force up to 15,000; pay
police officers more and introduce the death penalty
for severe cases of rape, sexual abuse of children
and kidnapping.
The
Opposition Leader said that while people were
starving, “the emperor and his wife” would
have spent a massive $174M on propaganda by the
end of their term in office, “which works
out to an average of $80,000 a day for the last
five and a half years.” Totalling the estimates
for entertainment, overseas travel, promotions,
publicity and hosting, Persad-Bissessar said Government
moved from an expenditure of $17.8M on propaganda
in 2002, to $260M in 2008, a 1,353 percent increase.
The UNC Government spent $14M on propaganda during
its term in office, she said.
“Mr Speaker there is a popular advertisement
that goes, ‘There are some things that money
cannot buy; for everything else there is MasterCard’...Obviously
the PM believes that there is nothing that money
cannot buy, so for everything — there is
ManningCard.”
Saying the staff at her office had even designed
such a card, Persad-Bissessar displayed it, much
to the amusement of the Prime Minister and his
colleagues.
She
said while the PM was refusing requests for a
higher minimum wage and a more realistic pension,
he increased his own income three times, effectively
doubling his salary and charging “$100,000
a plate to eat and drink with the mighty Emperor.
So, I ask you again, where is the love?”Persad-Bissessar
also questioned how a man with a reputation like
Martin Bouygues ended up with two mega-contracts
in Trinidad and Tobago — the $1.7 billion
Waterfront Project and the $15 billion Rapid Rail
Project.
She
claimed that Bouygues was known far and wide
for “romancing country leaders and then receiving
public works contracts.” Noting that Bouygues
visited the Waterfront site with the Prime Minister
and Udecott Chairman Calder Hart in December, Persad-Bissessar
said the contractor on the Waterfront project was
Bouygues Batiment T&T Construction company,
which was a joint venture of which Home Construction
Limited is a member.
Pointing
out that there was the interlocking directorships,
she said, “Andre Monteil, treasurer of the
PNM is a member of the Board of the Directors of
HCL. Mr Hart is a director in the Home Mortgage
Bank (HMB) and served alongside Mr Monteil. So
when Mr Hart awards billion-dollar contracts to
the companies of his friends, this is a serious
thing.
“It is even more suspect when the constant
figure who is always so providential that every
way he turns, lucrative, million and billion-dollar
deals just land in his lap, happens to be the treasurer
of the governing party,” she added.
Dealing with energy, she called on the Prime Minister
to lay the Ryder Scott Report.
“He continues in his mad rush towards gas-based
industrialisation in flagrant defiance of the findings
of the experts, confident only in the visions of
his prophetess that there will be more oil and
gas to be found,” she said.
Trinidad & Tobag Newsday
Saturday, August 25 2007
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