Yetming slams Manning’s Venezuela claim

UNC MP Gerald Yetming yesterday slammed Prime Minister Patrick Manning for saying that (Venezuela PM Hugo) “Chavez was responsible” for the state of crime in this country.

Manning had stated on Thursday that there was a link between the increase in the number of guns in Trinidad and Tobago and the political disturbances in Venezuela. But Yetming mocked the PM’s conclusions as he spoke on the Income Tax Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives. “Crime is everybody else’s problem but the government’s problem. It ain’t Chin Lee’s. It is now Chavez. Chavez is so powerful a man that he sits down in Venezuela and creating an increase in crime in Trinidad and Tobago,” Yetming derided. “Through Pier One,” Panday quipped. The UNC MP accused government of “terrorising, traumatising and brutalising” people, including Caroni workers. Noting that the cost of the Caroni VSEP —  excluding the topping-up of pension — was a one-off payment of $400 million, Yetming pointed out that government was prepared to put the same amount of money every year into CEPEP. “Where is the equity, where is the social conscience?” he asked. He added that government was getting the reputation of using the resources of the state, financial and otherwise, to brutalise people. He quoted extensively from a column by Newsday’s Editor Suzanne Mills, which said, among other things, that CEPEP was created to cultivate only one crop, the Balisier. He said government was using State funds to favour its own. By contrast, he said, a government agency, NHA, had bulldozed farm lands at Curepe. He pointed to the incident involving Peake’s Industries which was forced to take out a full-page advertisement talking about the “open and excessive” use of force by state-owned Chagaramas Development Authority “over a minor matter of rent.”

Yetming said the Income Tax Amendment Bill, which seeks to increase the tax exemption on severance benefits from $100,000 to $300,000  would only benefit 2,000 of the 10,000 Caroni workers. It would not relieve the trauma, terror  being imposed on the people of Caroni, he said. He said if government wanted to downsize sugar and create the Sugar Manufacturing Company of Trinidad and Tobago,  it should have put in train the process of rehiring some of the Caroni workers to work for the company, before implementing the VSEP plan. “Offer 1,300 jobs from Caroni and at least eliminate the trauma and terror for 1,300 people,” he said. Land could also have been offered for cultivation if the company needed more cane farmers to produce the 70,000 tons of sugar. Government could also offer these lands to other workers as well and help in the transition from workers to independent agriculturalists. He said the country would not sit idly while the government continued its policy of discrimination and brutalisation. Yetming also criticised Manning’s Caricom agenda. He said Manning, who would be going to Caricom to discuss the establishment of a Regional Stabilisation Fund, wanted to help St Vincent which had an unemployment rate of 30 percent, while leaving nationals of this country jobless. “While he is seeking to facilitate the economies of the region, he is sending home 10,000 at Caroni,” Yetming said, adding that the story was the same with BWIA. Yetming also stated that he expected a “massive and blatant cover-up” when the Linquist report on WASA is presented, because Prime Minister Patrick Manning allowed so much time to pass between when the revelations were first made and when the inquiry began.