PM Manning: Govt to end financial waste

GOVERNMENT is considering an expanded Helping You Prepare For Employment (HYPE) progamme in 2004 that will churn out 2,060 graduates annually and will “put to the axe” any expenditures that will compromise the country’s finances.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning made this disclosure while addressing yesterday’s graduation ceremony for the first batch of 450 HYPE graduates at UWI’s Sport and Physical Education Centre, St Augustine. Hailing the programme’s achievement’s to date, the Prime Minister told the graduates: “We in the Government must parallel your efforts, in a no less structured way, if together Trinidad and Tobago is to reach the goal set out in our 2020 vision. That is why a significant portion of any new revenues accruing to the Government — particularly revenues deriving from our expanding hydrocarbon resources, a wasting asset — be invested in areas that would assist in accelerating our advance to our national goal. We must put the axe to expenditures that would compromise the national finances, or would lead to inflationary excesses.”

Stressing Government’s intentions’ to develop the nation’s human and physical capital, Manning revealed: “The Government is now being asked to consider a proposal for a permanent expanded HYPE programme providing a network of centres in north, central and south Trinidad and in Tobago. This proposal projects an annual output of approximately 2,060 graduates each year from the various centres.” He said the estimated recurrent cost for the 2003 programme is $13.5 million while that for the proposed 2004 programme will be $17.5 million. Noting that Government’s critics would cry waste, Manning asked: “Can Trinidad and Tobago afford not to incur costs so critical to our transformational objectives and the growth and development of our economy and our society?” He added that the nation’s youths must be “gainfully occupied in the sunshine sectors of our economy instead of leaving them stranded in sunset industries.”

“To fail them is to fail the country. We dare not,” he declared. The Prime Minister observed that a positive spin-off of HYPE has been the creation of HYPE Construction Services Limited, which will assist in Government’s goal to build 100,000 houses over ten years. Manning added that the National Housing Authority (NHA) has already awarded a contract to the company to build 100 houses. The Prime Minister joked that politics was a more satisfying profession than education given its impact on the society but quickly conceded that NESC chairman Professor Ken Julien would have him at a serious disadvantage in such an argument since “I never had the chance to be an educator”. Housing Minister Martin Joseph revealed that a register has been created for HYPE graduates working with NHA contractors and his Ministry is discussing a similar register with the Urban Development Company of Trinidad and Tobago (UDECOTT).