PM unveils ‘new dawn’ for Tobago; promises own police force, fiscal control

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor—Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Herald­ing a “new dawn” for To­ba­go, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her ad­dress to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), un­veiled am­bi­tious plans for the is­land, in­clud­ing a greater share of na­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­sources, its own po­lice force, and im­proved ac­cess to wa­ter and hous­ing.

Ex­press­ing her de­sire for To­ba­go to at­tain self-gov­er­nance, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to sum up the pro­posed arrange­ment as, “One re­pub­lic, two is­lands, one peo­ple mov­ing for­ward to­geth­er in trust, in dig­ni­ty, in pur­pose, to­ward a com­mon, pros­per­ous fu­ture.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said self-gov­er­nance for To­ba­go un­der her ad­min­is­tra­tion will mean more than ex­ec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive con­trol over their own af­fairs, but fis­cal au­ton­o­my as well. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said this will in­volve the de­vel­op­ment of a “fair share mod­el” rather than To­ba­go just re­ceiv­ing be­tween four to six per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

“This equal­i­sa­tion mod­el in the first in­stance will al­low for mov­ing away from the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion per­cent­age-based bud­get­ing for de­vel­op­ment, but will move in­stead to per­cent­age-based bud­get­ing for de­vel­op­ment to a project-based bud­get­ing. So, from pop­u­la­tion-based bud­get­ing, which changes, fluc­tu­ates, and so on, we are look­ing at project-based bud­get­ing,” the Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so pre­sent­ed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine with a li­cence to al­low the THA to ex­port the ag­gre­gate and min­er­als from the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry.

“And this is some­thing that will give you the means to make mon­ey. This will give you the means to earn for­eign ex­change. And there­fore, they can’t say, ‘poor boy To­ba­go com­ing to beg poor girl Siparia’.”

Turn­ing to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter said the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will work with To­ba­go to es­tab­lish its own po­lice force on the is­land.

“My Gov­ern­ment sup­ports the idea of there be­ing a lo­calised po­lice force in To­ba­go. In the same way that all mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions in Trinidad ben­e­fit from such arrange­ments. I’m ad­vised, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Chief Sec­re­tary dis­cussed this mat­ter, with the Com­mis­sion­er when he was re­cent­ly on the is­land. We will work with you to give you your own po­lice unit here,” the Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so lament­ed what she de­scribed as To­ba­go’s wa­ter plight. The Prime Min­is­ter said in her in­ter­ac­tions with the pop­u­la­tion up­on her ar­rival on Mon­day evening, the peo­ple were cry­ing out for a more ef­fi­cient wa­ter sup­ply.

“WASA will in­vest in key de­vel­op­ment projects in the is­land of To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion of a de­sali­na­tion plant in Her­mitage. Char­lot­teville, I think my Min­is­ter Jear­lean John is from Char­lot­teville, orig­i­nal­ly, and I think Chief Sec­re­tary tells me his wife is from Char­lot­teville. So, they will all be very hap­py, all the peo­ple there, as we do de­sal plants there.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “And the fea­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er one in Stud­ley Park is be­ing con­sid­ered to meet the grow­ing wa­ter de­mands of the is­land. It is in­tend­ed to move the base­line sup­ply lev­el in Char­lot­teville and en­vi­rons from a 24-1 sup­ply to a more ac­cept­able lev­el over time.”

With re­spect to hous­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter said she was sad­dened to learn that the Rise­land Hous­ing Project in Carn­bee was shut down by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“And do you know why they shut it down? And why you didn’t get the mon­ey, Chief Sec­re­tary? You know why? They were mov­ing the project to some­where in Trinidad. They were tak­ing mon­ey as a project fund­ed by the IDB for To­ba­go to put it in Trinidad. To­day I want to an­nounce that project is com­ing back to Rise­land in To­ba­go. And we will be­gin with TT$20 mil­lion that was al­lo­cat­ed for the in­fra­struc­ture,” she de­clared.

The Prime Min­is­ter con­clud­ed her ad­dress by say­ing, “I thank you, but let me re­mind you, the an­chor holds. The an­chor holds. I thought you would like that.”

The Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) has an an­chor on its em­blem.

But with weeks to go be­fore the THA elec­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said her vis­it was not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

The push for To­ba­go’s Self-Gov­er­nance is at a ma­jor leg­isla­tive stand­still, fol­low­ing a sig­nif­i­cant de­feat in the Par­lia­ment in late 2024 when the re­quired bills were brought to the Low­er House by the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment) Bill, 2020, was de­feat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on De­cem­ber 9, 2024.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bills re­quire a Three-Fourths Spe­cial Ma­jor­i­ty to pass in the House. The for­mer gov­ern­ment’s 21 votes in favour were in­suf­fi­cient to meet this high thresh­old, as the then op­po­si­tion UNC vot­ed against the mo­tion.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine op­posed the fi­nal ver­sion of the bill, ar­gu­ing that the amend­ments in­tro­duced by the then gov­ern­ment were “in­con­se­quen­tial” and did not grant the sub­stan­tive au­ton­o­my that To­ba­go sought, such as a “fed­er­al type” arrange­ment.