YOUTH BUDGET TALKS

The parliament is letting the country's youth have their say on Budget 2025 via its Youth Budget Talks which took place at the Red House on Thursday.

Transcript

00:00The young people were granted an opportunity and made their voices heard saying they want quality over quantity.

00:08Millions and billions of dollars cause a lot of things but I fail to see the plan in these numbers.

00:22I fail to see a system that works to fix the problems that we have.

00:27And I fail to see how these numbers are going to interconnect to build our society.

00:35It's all well and good to put money into things but we need to see change.

00:42And we've been seeing them put lots of money towards the big ones, crime and education, for years.

00:48But where are we seeing the improvement?

00:51This cohort does not envy the finance minister's job.

00:55Well balanced in the sense that we recognize the economic climate that we're in currently.

01:02And we also recognize that a significant proportion of the budget is in recurrent expenditure.

01:10I'm sure we all can agree here that we still have subsidized gas, subsidized electricity rates.

01:17We still have free education, free healthcare.

01:20And I think the government is making the most of the current situation.

01:24And while the young people agree the budget would take the country through the next fiscal year,

01:30they believe there's nothing done for after that period.

01:34Throughout all these sectors within the government there's been, year over year, a lot of money put into all the sectors.

01:43But I haven't seen a lot of planning for the future.

01:46I've seen a lot of maintenance of the country, so like the subsidies for various sectors.

01:52And money being invested in the country, but nothing for long-term future development.

02:00Even as there are many opportunities for the young people of TNT,

02:05this group says attention ought to be paid to the actual aspirations of this demographic

02:11to reduce the drop-off rate in specific programs.

02:16I had the opportunity to be part of one of their recent programs, the National Leadership Training Program.

02:23And there wasn't a single drop-out in that specific program that they had.

02:28We started the course with 100 students, we ended it with 100 students.

02:33Whereas you will often hear in the programs like YAP and Amplify and all of these things that there's a significant drop-out rate.

02:42So I think now with this allocation of $338 or $336 million,

02:49we should place more focus on programs that the young people themselves want to see.

02:53And student-athletes have unmet needs.

02:57Another thing that the Minister could have done is allocated funds to actual traveling for sports.

03:05Whereas as I play sports, most of the money comes out of my own pocket

03:10when I go to travel and represent a country.

03:12And if I go to represent Trinidad and Tobago, I would like for the government to help me out.

03:16To help me out so I can bring back to them and show them that Trinidad does have very talented people.

03:22Arvishi Tamwari, Rupnur Ryan, TV6 News.