Rosemarie Sant
“It’s been a rough ride, but thankfully we on an even keel now,” says PNM chairman Franklin Khan of his party’s first year in government.
Khan, who holds the ministerial portfolios of Local Government and Rural Development did not want to rate the performance of the Keith Rowley administration. Instead he said they entered office facing the “major challenge” of balancing the fiscal account and attempting to “bring in line the obscene fiscal borrowing which the former Government undertook.”
In his view, they have done a good job so far.
“The fact that there have been no major retrenchments or cutbacks is testimony to the measures adopted by the Minister of Finance who has performed extremely well,” he said.
According to Khan, the Government was “constrained by access to capital in the first half of the fiscal year.”
He said: “We dealt with cost overruns of the PP Government, over invoicing, inflated invoicing. We have a lot of investigations on going into some of what we found. They almost brought the overdraft to the limit. There was a time when we had a cash flow of only three days.
He said the Government had “performed reasonably well” with good leadership from Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Finance Minister Colm Imbert.
Khan, who recently had the controversial Community Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (Cepep) placed under his ministry, has met chairman Trevor Lynch and the board but is “still being briefed” as he seek answers on why the programme has become “so unproductive.”
“Cepep has 265 contractors, runs a bill of $50 million and employs a grand total of 12,000 people but the country is still overrun with bush,” he said.
“It was not like that before. I plan to bring sanity back to the programme. We are not getting value for money. Cepep has lost its way and I intend to bring it back on track.”
The minister said he was not blaming contractors for problems with the programme.
“Management failed to give the country value for money and this must be addressed,” he said.
However, he assured: “There will be no major retrenchment. I am reviewing the programme and I will put my own stamp on Cepep.”
On the issue of Local Government reform, Khan said 14 consultations were held and a draft policy paper is now before the Cabinet. He expects legislation to go before Parliament by the first quarter of 2017. The next local Government election will be held under the existing legislation.
Improving rural communities
Commenting on one of the PNM’s key manifesto promises, Khan said over the last year Government had been crafting the structure for rural development. He said he had requested an increase in his ministry’s budgetary allocation “to facilitate projects to improve rural development infrastructure.”
He said there was no budgetary allocation for rural development in the 2015/2016 budget because when they came into office after the general election the budget template had already been set.
However, development projects are in the pipeline, with tenders are out for the design of the Moruga Road Fishing Facility and Port, a “$250 million dollar project which will be awarded in October. Other contracts are for the “route alignment and preliminary design for the Valencia to Toco Road and the Toco Port to Scarborough.
“These will cater for the development of east Trinidad,” Khan said.
The aim, he explained, was “not to urbanise rural communities but to keep the rural lifestyle and bring the communities up to the standard of the urban areas.”
“If there has been any discrimination in this country it is urban versus rural. Rural people suffer because they don’t have the same services and facilities that urban people get. The devolution of authority through local government reform will also help in this regard.”