Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The on­go­ing ex­change of words be­tween Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma and Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing is wors­en­ing.In the lat­est cross talk, Shar­ma said the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion was the low­est per­form­ing mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion.He again said Lee Sing was suf­fer­ing from "new­ness." It was not the first time Shar­ma said so.

At yes­ter­day's func­tion at the min­istry's Kent House of­fice, Mar­aval, to wel­come new min­is­ter in the min­istry, Rudranath In­dars­ingh, and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary Nela Khan, Shar­ma said:

"The low­est per­form­ing cor­po­ra­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go in terms of monies spent, which means ser­vices ren­dered to cit­i­zens in any cor­po­ra­tion, is the city of Port-of-Spain."That alone will tell you. You can't ask for more than you can spend. You have to spend what is al­ready yours."Lee Sing has con­tin­u­al­ly charged that Shar­ma was with­hold­ing mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to the cor­po­ra­tion for sev­er­al ini­tia­tives and projects for the up­lift­ment of T&T's cap­i­tal.Shar­ma, in the past, has called the may­or "green and in­ex­pe­ri­enced" and suf­fer­ing from "new­ness."The at­tacks have been on­go­ing from around Au­gust last year af­ter the two as­sumed their po­si­tions in May and Ju­ly re­spec­tive­ly.Shar­ma dis­missed Lee Sing's state­ments that mon­ey was be­ing with­held.He said no min­is­ter had the pow­er to pre­vent a bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to a cor­po­ra­tion.Shar­ma added: "That mon­ey be­longs to the cor­po­ra­tion.

"In fact, I am not the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer here so there is ab­solute no truth but if there is a false­hood to the truth and if there is any hold­back of any mon­ey, which is not true, it will be the la­dy to my right hand side (Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ar­lene Mc­Comie) be­cause I have no pow­er to hold back any mon­ey from any cor­po­ra­tion."In at­ten­dance were sev­er­al may­ors and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers (CEO) of the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.Lee Sing was not present.How­ev­er, the cor­po­ra­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by its CEO Winifred David.