00:00For these young parliamentarians, the budget is about more than dollars and cents.
00:05Job creation emerged as one of the strongest themes, with a call for government to close
00:10the gap between training young people and actually getting them into the workforce.
00:14When you have a job, especially as a young person, it's your first ever working job,
00:18you get money, you get independence, it builds dignity, it builds responsibility, and we
00:23need that in a workforce because a workforce is what essentially makes a society run.
00:27You can't, yes of course you want to pay attention to healthcare and all of these
00:32other different aspects, AI, but you can't do any of those things if you have a disillusioned
00:36workforce or no workforce at all. So that's where I think the why is important. We need
00:40to empower our young people by giving them the tool of money and responsibility and jobs.
00:45The message is also that education must lead to opportunity, whether through university,
00:51technical training, or new areas of the economy.
00:54As young people, we need to look beyond these figures that are presented to us and
00:58ask ourselves the question, what opportunities is this budget creating for me? Is this making
01:03education more accessible? Is this going to create an economy where we could build businesses
01:08and build careers where young persons, where we could finally grow out of that mindset that
01:13the only way to have opportunities is to leave Trinidad and Tobago? So the budget is a blueprint for
01:20the Trinidad and Tobago that our generation is going to inherit tomorrow.
01:23But they also want the government to account for the money they already spend, particularly on
01:28education and the skills programs.
01:30Making sure that the citizens, we know we're getting bang for buck. So looking at each person
01:36that would have received gate funding for their undergraduates and making sure we follow up with
01:40them after the fact and ask them, hey, are you working, you studied in psychology? Are you working
01:45in psychology? No, you're working in another form of healthcare. You're working in customer service.
01:49Why is that? Are we funding oversaturated industries? What directions can the government take to sort of
01:57find out what? Because it's almost like a money pit because we don't know where the money is going
02:01because we don't follow up. And for this young parliamentarian, a specific health issue should
02:07be a budget priority, period poverty and the need to turn funding into results. When young women cannot
02:14afford menstrual products, they can't go to school. It's now an educational issue. When women can't
02:20afford these products and they are missing work, it becomes an economic barrier. This is an issue of
02:25dignity. It is essentially a human rights issue. In this project, I am installing sanitary pad dispensers
02:32in schools across San Fernando, as well as giving the schools a year's worth of refills for these
02:38dispensers. And in totality, it is costing only $1,300 for one school for an entire year, for an
02:47entire year's worth of supply. This is including the dispensers itself, installation, refills. It's
02:53including all of that. And I don't think that is an absurd number. And I don't think this is such
02:59a
02:59incredibly out of reach project for us to implement this in all schools across Trinidad and to be moved.
03:05I don't think that's an outrageous request at all. These young parliamentarians have one thing in
03:13common. They want Monday's budget to be measured not just by what is allocated, but by what young
03:18people can see, feel and use now in the future. Charlotte Kisto, TV6 News.
