Standing before thousands of soaking-wet but unwavering supporters at her United National Congress (UNC) party’s annual congress held in Couva on Sunday, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar marked the first anniversary of her administration’s return to power, delivering a keynote address that balanced accountability, promise, and calls for patience from the nation’s citizens.
Draped in the UNC’s iconic golden yellow attire, Persad-Bissessar greeted thousands of attendees — which she estimated between 17,000 and 20,000 based on local police estimates — as she processed through the packed crowd toward the main stage. Even when heavy rain broke out mid-speech, her supporters refused to leave their positions, a show of loyalty that underscored the strong base of support for the new administration.
Opening her address, the Prime Minister drew a sharp contrast between her administration and the previous 10-year rule of the People’s National Movement (PNM), claiming that UNC supporters had been systematically excluded, abused, and marginalized during the opposition’s tenure from 2015 to 2025. She asserted that her leadership would break from this pattern of retaliatory exclusion, while also promising to address past harms done to UNC loyalists. “I am not going to advantage anyone, but I will square up the account because the bad treatment of good people cannot go unanswered,” she told the crowd. “I have nothing to lose. Why? Because we lost everything before.”
Reiterating the UNC’s core 2024 campaign promise that “When the UNC wins, everybody wins,” Persad-Bissessar acknowledged that many citizens have not yet felt tangible improvements from the new government’s actions, even as the country has started to reverse the national decline inherited from the previous administration. She stressed that while meaningful progress has already been made, significant work remains to deliver widespread prosperity.
One of the central policy priorities of the UNC’s first year has been addressing the nation’s persistent unemployment crisis, a top concern for voters before and after last year’s general election. Persad-Bissessar sharply criticized the PNM’s long-running temporary make-work programs, the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP), arguing that these initiatives trapped low-income citizens in cycles of entrenched poverty instead of delivering sustainable economic opportunity, while also becoming riddled with corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
Her administration has made the controversial decision to restructure the existing CEPEP and URP frameworks, a short-term painful adjustment that she said has already cleared the way for long-term sustainable job growth. Despite inheriting a nearly empty national treasury from the previous government, Persad-Bissessar reported that her administration has already created more than 15,000 full-time, meaningful jobs across multiple government ministries. If current growth trajectories hold, she projected that the administration could deliver more than 70,000 new jobs over its five-year term ending in 2030.
Multiple upcoming infrastructure and economic development projects are set to add thousands more positions in the near term, the Prime Minister announced. New housing developments run by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) are expected to generate more than 3,000 jobs, while the first phase of the government’s national revitalization plan will add approximately 4,000 additional roles. She also unveiled two major industrial and economic expansion projects: a 500-acre expansion of the Plipdeco industrial estate at Point Lisas, and a newly Cabinet-approved 256-acre Special Economic Zone in Picton, adjacent to the University of the West Indies South Campus, that will be purpose-built to host data center operations. Both projects already have companies negotiating memoranda of understanding for space, and are projected to create thousands of long-term private sector jobs. A third partnership with international firms to revitalize the Point Fortin heritage storage tank farms and local marine infrastructure will add further employment opportunities, she added.
Housing and land distribution have also emerged as core drivers of job creation and public good under the UNC administration, Persad-Bissessar said. The country faces a backlog of more than 228,000 housing applicants, and the government has advanced a $3.4 billion public-private partnership (PPP) housing project that does not draw on taxpayer funds. Ten parcels of public land have already been transferred to the HDC to build 1,543 new housing units, with another 3,700 new homes planned through PPP models this year and next, creating an additional 3,000 construction and related jobs.
The administration also reintroduced its popular Land for the Landless programme in January, which has already received more than 20,000 applications from citizens seeking land access. All applications are being reviewed under a transparent new framework, and every applicant will receive formal feedback, the Prime Minister confirmed. To date, the Ministry of Land and Legal Affairs has already delivered 553 Caroni land leases, issued 200 Certificates of Comfort, granted 137 State land grants, and resolved long-running land disputes impacting 100 families.
Closing her address to supporters, Persad-Bissessar acknowledged that many individual citizens have not yet accessed the new jobs or services the government has created, and urged the public to maintain patience through the ongoing transition. “Hold strain, Dorothy, hold on Dorothy…better days are coming, better days are ahead, just hold on!” she implored, repeating her core message that after a period of painful adjustment, widespread economic joy and prosperity will follow under the UNC government.