Will the new changes to the Cabinet any impact on the Government's promise of more sustainable employment as it has undertaken a reform of State funded programmes of the URP and CEPEP?
And what about any impact on preparations for the Budgets?
The new Land and Legal Affairs Minister answers those questions in part three of our interview following what he says is a realignment of Cabinet portfolios.
00:00TV6 News spoke with the new Land and Legal Affairs Minister, Saddam Hussein, the day before Finance Minister Davindranath Tankou officially announced that October 13th would be budget day for fiscal 2026.
00:14This follows changes to the responsibilities of cabinet members made by Prime Minister Kamala Passat-Bissessa. Minister Hussain, for example, who had the land portfolio added to his workload, would be among the cabinet members getting allocations for expanded ministerial portfolios.
00:33This is not a decision by VAPS. I said before it was a decision based on consultation between the cabinet and the prime minister and so on. So therefore, I don't sit in the Ministry of Finance, but this is not a decision by VAPS. This was a well thought out, careful, deliberate decision for an alignment to take place or realignment to create that level of synergy and effectiveness in the public service.
00:58In addition to the public service, there's the wider public sector.
01:01The opposition has been making this sort of a major point about things like CPAP, URP and the government's approach to it. Would this realignment affect in any way the government's planning for dealing with what the government has said to be seeking sustainable employment?
01:18Yeah, so definitely we have looked at ways through various ministries to create that level of sustainable employment. If you examine the public sector, you will see a number of vacancies.
01:31Minister Hossein made reference to the sitting of the parliament's standing finance committee when it examined salaries in the public service.
01:39And the question we ask is, how many vacancies? And you will hear sometimes you have in particular ministries or departments, 40, 50 percent vacancies in terms of warm bodies and contract employment and short-term employment. It's very high.
01:53And the prime minister, in her wisdom, she said that she wants to create that level of sustainable employment for citizens so that they are treated with that level of dignity also.
02:06And we posed the question to Minister Hossein about the state's rental of properties. He said this is a controversial issue. One prime minister, Passat-Bissessa, raised the concerns about just after the 2025 general election and while the UNC was in opposition during the former PNM administration.
02:26When you look at the owners, they may be aligned to a particular political party. You see the quantum of rent that may be varied based on who gets the rental and so on.
02:39And then you would have heard the minister of public administration also announced that most of those rental agreements have expired. And yet the landlords collect these rents and so on. So that is definitely something that we would look at. The state owns the land. It might be very economical for us to build on those lands. And therefore, we create ministries and state departments and agencies that can occupy those buildings.
03:05As for the overall changes to the cabinet, you have all of the lands being placed under one ministry, for example, in public utilities and energy use. So public utilities deal with TNTEC and distribution, you know, see the generation aspect being placed within that one ministry.
03:20You see the prime minister under her office of the prime minister dealing with the national self-help grants and so on because a lot of requests comes directly to the office of the prime minister for those types of assistance and things like that.
03:33So therefore, you are seeing a realignment of portfolios, agencies and so on to create that level of efficiency within the public service.
03:42According to the notice in the Gazette, the prime minister's additional responsibilities also include heritage buildings, constitutional reform, national trust, national commission for self-help limited, national library services and the national library and information system authority.
04:00So in terms of the office of the prime minister, from what you are saying, so I'm asking the question, it's not an issue of consolidating power within one office in the office of the prime minister.
04:11It's creating efficiency.
04:12While the opposition has expressed its criticisms, the Express newspaper has reported that Prime Minister Prasad-Bassess has said her decision to realign ministerial portfolios is a win for the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
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