Cut expenditure

She addressed a media conference afterwards. “The stakeholders were unanimous in stressing the need for government to restrain expenditure and to properly plan the expenditure it did undertake”.

She lamented that in this time of rising prices, some 300,000 people were living on just $12 per day.

“Inflation and runaway prices are a serious cause for concern.”

With rising prices, she wondered how anyone could live on the fixed income of the existing old age pension of $1,150 per month.

“It needs to be increased.”

In addition she said the Government should raise the ceiling on the income a pensioner was allowed to receive while still qualifying for the old age pension.

She also urged that the pension age be reduced from age 65 to 60 years old. Speaking later Caroni Central MP Dr Hamza Rafeeq added that many former senior public servants were now having to survive on a pension of just $300 or $400 per month, and he predicted the Government would have great difficulty paying future pensions.

Persad-Bissessar said the Government and Central Bank were bouncing heads over inflation, in a what she dubbed a “firefight”.

“There is disharmony between the Government’s fiscal policies and the Central Bank’s monetary policy.”

The Government was spending extravagantly, she said, while the Central Bank was trying to mop up excess liquidity.

She was scathing of governmental policy. On the Caroni (1975) Limited issue, she declared: “The representative of the labour movement was particularly adamant about reports that some 3,000 two-acre plots had already been delivered to former sugar workers were absolutely untrue, and suggested that the deeds for these persons should be presented now to verify.

She slammed the Government for sitting on the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) (which had been introduced by the former UNC government) and after the recent collapse of scaffolding at a Government complex in Port-of-Spain, the rush to appoint the OSHA Authority, a move which she said does not make the OSHA Act implementable.

She invited the public to send their ideas for the Budget to her office, their MP, or Rienzi Complex.

Newsday asked Persad-Bissessar why she was absent on Sunday when former UNC chairman Basdeo Panday joined former Attorney General Ramesh Maharaj on an anti-smelter protest walk at La Brea.

She said she had been invited too but was unable to make it.

Saying she works seven days a week, she said she had opted to spend Sunday with her family including playing with her young grandson.