Against the back­drop of in­creas­ing crime, for­eign ex­change short­ages, and the woes of cit­i­zens strug­gling to make ends meet, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance de­liv­ered the 2025 bud­get in a marathon five-hour-plus ses­sion.

Five hours—just an­oth­er small is­land thing? Of course, the dif­fer­ence be­tween the in­con­ve­nience cit­i­zens suf­fered to pay prop­er­ty tax and the te­di­um of watch­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is that you didn’t have to en­dure the lat­ter as you had the op­tion of switch­ing chan­nels to mon­i­tor the next Mid­dle East mis­sile sal­vo or, bet­ter still, watch a good Net­flix rom-com.

Sen­si­ble re­spons­es—you knew you could read all about it the next day.

“Stead­fast and Res­olute: Forg­ing Path­ways to Pros­per­i­ty” was the up­beat pain-avoid­ance theme of the bud­get that some brand an elec­tion gam­bit. If it was, that is par for the course of every democ­ra­cy.

Re­gard­less of sub­stan­tial na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, and health al­lo­ca­tions, the crux is that the bil­lions will con­tin­ue to grease ar­cha­ic sys­tems and poor man­age­ment. It will not al­le­vi­ate the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges im­pact­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and cit­i­zens.

Poor main­te­nance is a con­tin­u­ing haz­ard and is ev­i­dent in school build­ings, health fa­cil­i­ties, and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty crime-fight­ing equip­ment, eg, Coast Guard ves­sels, po­lice mo­tor ve­hi­cles, and port scan­ners. In­deed, neg­a­tivism is not a virtue; it saps en­er­gy and erodes good in­ten­tions. But let’s face it, the “main­te­nance” of pub­lic prop­er­ty has not been a qual­i­ty trait in gov­er­nance for the past 62 years of in­de­pen­dence.

There was out­rage over un­in­hab­it­able schools, a sit­u­a­tion at­trib­ut­able in part to the shut­down of schools and main­te­nance ser­vices dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, re­sult­ing in de­cay, rust, roach­es, rats, oth­er in­fes­ta­tions, and thefts. But why didn’t the school man­age­ment know about these con­di­tions be­fore the re­open­ing? Is it that there were no time­ly in­spec­tions?

Pri­vate schools’ man­age­ment typ­i­cal­ly un­der­takes such checks to en­sure the con­di­tions are con­ducive to op­er­a­tions be­fore the open­ing. All pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions have fa­cil­i­ties de­part­ments, but who is ever held to ac­count when pub­lic prop­er­ty falls in­to a state of dis­re­pair? The ex­cuse is al­ways “no mon­ey,” but the prob­lem is poor man­age­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed mil­lions to ac­quire 12 new ves­sels for the Coast Guard and 2,000 new po­lice cars. The im­age brought to mind is of the hun­dreds of po­lice ve­hi­cles parked in var­i­ous lo­ca­tions. We hear about the theft of parts, and since these are po­lice ve­hi­cles, the ob­vi­ous ques­tion to ask is who the thieves are.

One won­ders about the fate of the po­lice body cam­eras, well … Poor main­te­nance re­sults in in­creased re­pair costs, de­creased prop­er­ty val­ues, struc­tur­al dam­age, health and safe­ty risks, ac­ci­dents, work dis­rup­tion, and re­duced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. All ev­i­dent in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as one ex­am­ple. Mil­lions of dol­lars are wast­ed an­nu­al­ly, and when added to cor­rup­tion, the prob­lem is far-reach­ing. Mon­ey is spent as if it is a cure for neg­li­gence, en­dem­ic em­ploy­ment prob­lems, and poor man­age­ment.

There are many crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives, but is there a com­pre­hen­sive and co­he­sive so­cial and crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem strat­e­gy in­form­ing an­nu­al bud­gets? If there were prop­er cor­po­rate gov­er­nance sys­tems, in­clud­ing in­de­pen­dent risk man­age­ment and au­dit­ing sys­tems at the SSA, the al­leged egre­gious hu­man re­sources and oth­er po­ten­tial­ly desta­bil­is­ing prac­tices may well have been pre-empt­ed. In To­ba­go, hope­ful­ly, a fea­si­bil­i­ty study has in­formed the po­ten­tial vi­a­bil­i­ty of a new five-star ho­tel in To­ba­go.

Lo­cal tourism is buoy­ant. To get air­lift and in­crease for­eign tourism, To­ba­go needs qual­i­ty ho­tel rooms from brand­ed ho­tels like San­dals that pro­mote their fa­cil­i­ties to at­tract tourists. Tourism aside, a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem in To­ba­go is the need for more em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple, so one won­ders whether any stud­ies have been done to iden­ti­fy prospects for the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er in­dus­tries there that would gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment and rev­enue.

There are rea­sons to be op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture. We have weath­ered bad and not-so-good times. We have been re­silient, pa­tient, and trust­ing of gov­ern­ments and their bud­gets. We have abun­dant tol­er­ance and an easy-go­ing na­ture, of­ten tak­en for grant­ed. The bud­get aims at sta­bil­i­ty and shows con­cern for vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

The Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of the pri­vate sec­tor to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, in­creas­ing em­ploy­ment and tax rev­enues. For too long, we have heard about plans to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness and the high crime rate that ex­ac­er­bates the chal­lenges the pri­vate sec­tor faces.

Isn’t it time we go be­yond the talk and get it done? Or is that just a small is­land thing, ole talk?