Leader of the Opposition Dr Keith Rowley says the Cabinet decision to pay $6.8 million to retrieve a crashed firetruck remains a scandal. He spoke during yesterday’s House of Representatives debate on a government motion to increase the 2012/13 budget by $2.9 billion. He told legislators the entire matter was madness.
On June 4, the T&T Guardian reported exclusively on the November 2012 Cabinet decision to pay the money for a firetruck that crashed along the North Coast. He said Cabinet ministers agreed to that decision “with their eyes wide open” and every citizen was scandalised by the decision. He said that matter was only the thin end of the wedge in the Government’s operations.
Rowley insisted it was madness for the Government to tell the population it was a good deal as the cost of a new firetruck would have been close to $40 million. In his contribution, Rowley also said the Government was claiming the economy was growing but not telling the nation that the public debt also was increasing. He said the public debt in 2010 was just over $39 billion and it was estimated to increase to over $60 billion in 2013.
According to Rowley, the external debt increased from $8.7 billion in 2010 to an estimated $17 billion this year and the contingency debt increased from $22 billion in 2010 to an estimated $32 billion in 2013. Rowley said the average citizen did not believe Finance Minister Larry Howai when he said the economy was growing under the PP Government.