With the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Fi­nance Bill com­ing be­fore the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to give ef­fect to the 2026 Bud­get mea­sures, the Gov­ern­ment was pre­sent­ed with the ide­al plat­form to ex­plain to the coun­try how it in­tends to fund the long-promised pay­out to pub­lic ser­vants.

At is­sue is $3.8 bil­lion in retroac­tive pay­ments—some of which is to be dis­bursed by De­cem­ber 23—along with an ad­di­tion­al $420 mil­lion in an­nu­al re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture once new salary scales take ef­fect at the end of Jan­u­ary 2026. No­tably, nei­ther the ar­rears nor the ex­pand­ed wage bill was ex­plic­it­ly pro­vid­ed for in the na­tion­al Bud­get.

Yet, by the end of the par­lia­men­tary sit­ting, the coun­try was no clear­er on where the mon­ey would come from, amid warn­ings from the Op­po­si­tion that a re­turn to heavy bor­row­ing would fur­ther in­flate the na­tion­al debt.

The on­ly de­fin­i­tive in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo was that sim­i­lar back­pay de­mands from oth­er trade unions would not be set­tled in time for Christ­mas.

When Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er ad­dressed the House, her state­ment fo­cused less on fund­ing and more on re­mind­ing the na­tion that the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion had, in her view, failed over the past decade to mean­ing­ful­ly im­prove pub­lic sec­tor wages.

She did clar­i­fy that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was in­struct­ed to en­sure that part of the pay­ment would be made be­fore Christ­mas and that dis­cus­sions be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer would con­tin­ue to de­ter­mine what le­gal mech­a­nisms could be used to set­tle the out­stand­ing bal­ance.

How­ev­er, her on­ly con­tri­bu­tion on the fund­ing of both the ar­rears and the new­ly un­bud­get­ed ex­pen­di­ture was that Min­is­ter Tan­coo would pro­vide de­tails at a lat­er date.

This was yet an­oth­er missed op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the most ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum and at the most ap­pro­pri­ate time.

The ques­tions be­ing asked can­not, and should not, be dis­missed as a nui­sance to the Gov­ern­ment.

Long be­fore the agree­ment on a 10 per cent wage set­tle­ment, con­cerns were al­ready be­ing raised about how the coun­try in­tends to ex­pand its rev­enue base af­ter years of de­clin­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

As it stands, the pub­lic re­mains large­ly in the dark about how de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties will be fi­nanced, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing the fail­ure to re­vive the Drag­on gas ini­tia­tive amid on­go­ing US-Venezuela ten­sions.

While new en­er­gy projects are ex­pect­ed to come on stream in 2026 and 2027, T&T has nev­er been in a po­si­tion to ab­sorb such a sub­stan­tial in­crease in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture so eas­i­ly.

None of this amounts to a con­dem­na­tion of pub­lic ser­vants who, un­ques­tion­ably, have seen their dis­pos­able in­come erod­ed over time by ris­ing costs of liv­ing, a point the Prime Min­is­ter was right to note.

The fair­ness of im­proved wages is not the is­sue.

The cen­tral ques­tion is whether the coun­try can af­ford a pay­out of this mag­ni­tude at this time.

The an­swer lies in the source of the funds and in the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to en­sure that the wider pop­u­la­tion is not ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the fis­cal con­se­quences of such a large com­mit­ment.

This is what many were hop­ing to hear yes­ter­day.

There is no doubt that the ad­min­is­tra­tion has won the loy­al­ty and con­fi­dence of thou­sands of pub­lic ser­vants by de­liv­er­ing on a promise made dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.

How­ev­er, the greater chal­lenge now is main­tain­ing the trust of the rest of the na­tion by clear­ly as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that, in this re­gard, Pe­ter will not be asked to pay for Paul.