Kamla: A Rewind, not a Reset – How PNM Destroyed the Foreign Used Car Industry
As we come to an end of the Standing Finance Committee stage of the budget, we look back at the PNM’s Budget 2020/2021. They have been calling this Budget a “reset” but judging by the policies within, or rather the lack of policies, this Budget is not a reset – it’s a Rewind.
This Budget is taking our nation backward, not forward. Today Rowley and the PNM are made up of senior failures. These were the same men and women, Rowley, Imbert, Camille, Hinds who were once part of a failed Manning administration.
This PNM government has taken us – 40 years back in the past.
Some of the current MPs were not even born then so they may not remember those difficult times in our nation’s history. Well for those of you too young to know, there was a time when if you wanted to buy a car you had to line up outside a dealer in Port of Spain. Then you had to put your name on a waiting list that had you waiting for years upon years.
That’s how you bought a car, back in the 1980s, under the PNM. Those were the times when poor people couldn’t afford to buy a car because only a few of the big boys were allowed to import cars.
Well, this Budget has effectively destroyed the foreign used car industry. That industry allowed for any family to own a car. That market allowed for a poor family to have a car to go to work with, to take their children to school with.
It allowed young people with a small job to be able to buy a car. It allowed single mothers the chance to own a vehicle.
Now Rowley says T&T has too many cars. If T&T has a problem with traffic – then the solution is to have better traffic management, decentralise government services,
make more Government services available online and implement an efficient public transportation system.
All of those things were started under a government I led-and was abandoned under this PNM government.
Instead, they plan to restrict cars, not develop proper traffic management solutions but to deny you the opportunity to own a vehicle.
The solution can’t be to deprive people of being able to afford a car for their family!
The real question is why the Rowley government has destroyed the economy to the point where we have such low amounts of income and investment.