PM hails patience of workers owed money

“We have to be very cognisant of this and have some empathy with them. Many of these persons are persons whose next pay packet is extremely important because they have such little reserves,” said Rowley.

He added: “As a Government we are cognisant of how patient the population has been, with respect to those persons who are owed monies and other kinds of thing. We are thankful to them for being patient but they cannot be patient forever.

“We are trying to ensure that we try to make the most of what is available and commit to ensuring that those persons especially at the lower end of the income- scale get what is due. But the overall picture in Trinidad and Tobago is one of significant reductions.

“We want our economy to grow, we want people to feel that there is an economy and a future.

We want our young people to know our country has a future and we want our business community to know there is a future in manufacturing and a future in doing business in TT.” The Prime Minister said the Government’s conversation is not that TT is about to close its doors, but that we can’t get more from less.

“There is less now and for those who are demanding more from less, this is a difficult equation.

What we are saying is that where there is less as the time is now we try to ensure there is equity in a distribution order.

A lot of what you are seeing now is pent-up aggravation because persons were owed money from before,” he said.

The Government, he added, has had to suppress its expenditure to come closer to its revenue.

“So all of us are in a situation of less to go around, and the Government is trying to manage that.

There has been no mass layoffs of Government workers in this country and the Government is trying to maintain that.” While workers are owed monies, it is most vital to save their jobs, Rowley said. “Jobs first, owed money comes after.” The Government has spent significant sums to pay monies owed, he said, also noting that much of today’s debt was left unpaid even when TT had more money than it has today.

“The first objective was to try to preserve the jobs we have and try to grow the economy when we got past 2016,” he said.

Saying 2016 was a very difficult year, the Prime Minister said in a few months the Government’s Budget Speech will give an update.