Tancoo admits Budget error in TRHA allocation

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter 

[email protected]

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has ad­mit­ted that an er­ror was made in the 2027 Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA), while as­sur­ing that the au­thor­i­ty will re­ceive enough fund­ing to meet its op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

The ad­mis­sion came dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee re­view of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) bud­get al­lo­ca­tions, fol­low­ing sus­tained ques­tion­ing from Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert over the sharp re­duc­tion in fund­ing for To­ba­go’s pri­ma­ry health­care provider.

Tan­coo ac­knowl­edged the mis­take af­ter Im­bert queried why the TRHA had been al­lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $239.7 mil­lion for fis­cal 2027, de­spite his­tor­i­cal­ly re­quir­ing about $700 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to op­er­ate.

“Was it an er­ror?” Im­bert asked.

“Yes,” Tan­coo replied when pressed on whether the al­lo­ca­tion re­sult­ed from a mis­take by the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The is­sue arose af­ter Beck­les high­light­ed that the TRHA had been al­lo­cat­ed about $510.3 mil­lion less than in pre­vi­ous years and ques­tioned the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the re­duc­tion.

“This seems to be an area where we would need to sup­ple­ment lat­er go­ing for­ward,” Beck­les said.

Tan­coo ini­tial­ly ex­plained that dis­cus­sions had been held with the THA, which was ex­pect­ed to re­view its al­lo­ca­tions and con­sid­er trans­fer­ring funds be­tween bud­getary heads or seek­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­port from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

How­ev­er, Im­bert chal­lenged that ap­proach, ar­gu­ing that it would force the THA to di­vert re­sources from oth­er crit­i­cal pro­grammes.

“So, you are say­ing, as a so­lu­tion, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly must take mon­ey that’s al­lo­cat­ed else­where for im­por­tant things,” Im­bert said.

Tan­coo main­tained that the THA would first ex­am­ine its ex­ist­ing al­lo­ca­tions, not­ing that vire­ments be­tween bud­getary heads and sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing re­mained avail­able op­tions.

He lat­er sought to re­as­sure the com­mit­tee that the TRHA would not be left with­out the re­sources need­ed to func­tion.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les on how long the au­thor­i­ty could op­er­ate on the ex­ist­ing al­lo­ca­tion, Tan­coo said he was con­fi­dent ad­di­tion­al fund­ing arrange­ments would cov­er its ex­pens­es.

“I am 100 per cent cer­tain that the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty will have suf­fi­cient funds al­lo­cat­ed to it be­tween now and the mid-year re­view to cov­er all of its ex­pens­es,” he said.

Mean­while, at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man had called for an ur­gent re­view of the bud­get, de­scrib­ing the re­duc­tion as a “ma­jor in­jus­tice” to To­ba­go.

Roberts-Radg­man said the TRHA re­ceived $750 mil­lion in fis­cal 2026 but had been al­lo­cat­ed less than $240 mil­lion for fis­cal 2027, rep­re­sent­ing a re­duc­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $510 mil­lion, or 68 per cent.

She warned that the cut could place fur­ther strain on an al­ready chal­lenged health­care sys­tem, cit­ing on­go­ing is­sues at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, in­clud­ing air-con­di­tion­ing prob­lems, can­celled surg­eries and con­cerns about am­bu­lance ser­vices.

“For those who have been fol­low­ing what has been hap­pen­ing in To­ba­go, we al­ready have a fail­ing health sys­tem,” she said.

The sen­a­tor al­so ques­tioned whether pa­tients could face re­duced ser­vices and whether health­care work­ers could be af­fect­ed while the au­thor­i­ty await­ed ad­di­tion­al fund­ing.

“A dis­cus­sion is not a guar­an­tee,” Roberts-Radg­man cau­tioned, ar­gu­ing that wait­ing un­til the mid-year bud­get re­view for sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing could jeop­ar­dise es­sen­tial health­care ser­vices.

She called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe to in­ter­vene and pro­vide clar­i­ty on how the fund­ing short­fall would be ad­dressed.