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Monday, July 7, 2025

Khan: Where did $20b for social services go?

by

20160727

"Where did the mon­ey go?"So asked Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Franklin Khan, in ref­er­ence to $20 bil­lion that was spent on so­cial ser­vices pro­grammes over a sev­en-year pe­ri­od be­tween dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments in T&T.

Khan was ad­dress­ing chair­men and oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion bod­ies across T&T at a meet­ing yes­ter­day on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.Dis­clos­ing the Pover­ty Re­port for 2007, Khan said pover­ty in T&T av­er­aged 17.4 per cent. He added that in 2014, that fig­ure shock­ing­ly in­creased to 24 per cent.

"Be­tween 2007 to 2014, in two dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments, $20 bil­lion was spent in so­cial ser­vices but where did the mon­ey go? Some­thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong," Khan said.

"The de­ci­sions in the sys­tem is dis­or­gan­ised and poor­ly ad­min­is­tered. There are leaks and wastages and very like­ly cor­rupt," he added.

Khan said he strong­ly be­lieved monies which were sup­posed to go to the peo­ple who gen­uine­ly need­ed it in so­ci­ety for food cards, dis­abil­i­ty grants, hous­ing grants for im­prove­ments and re­pairs did not get it.

He said un­der the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, cor­po­ra­tions would be giv­en more pow­er and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, one of which was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the de­liv­ery of so­cial ser­vices to the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty, who re­al­ly de­served them and who would be point­ed out by their re­spec­tive coun­cil­lors.

Dur­ing the se­ries of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions dur­ing the past sev­er­al months through­out at the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion re­gions, Khan said the theme that per­me­at­ed the en­tire con­sul­ta­tion ex­er­cise was ac­count­abil­i­ty.

He said while the peo­ple's opin­ion was rea­son­able of giv­ing more pow­er to the peo­ple who were al­ready cor­rupt, which they feared would bring up­on more cor­rup­tion, Khan said what was most star­tling to him was that the ac­cu­sa­tion of cor­rup­tion was not at the lev­el by coun­cil­lors but at the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"I have heard too many ac­cu­sa­tions in the con­sul­ta­tions to turn a blind eye, so as part of this leg­isla­tive re­form we will seek to amend the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act," Khan said.

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, ac­cord­ing to Khan, is ex­pect­ed to re­move the red tape and bu­reau­cra­cies that pre­vent lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies from do­ing their work in an ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient man­ner.

Some of the pro­pos­als for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form as high­light­ed by Khan in­cludes se­cu­ri­ty of fund­ing, which will al­low cor­po­ra­tions to keep cer­tain tax­es and rev­enues col­lect­ed with­in their bound­aries to use for their own de­vel­op­ment, ex­am­ple prop­er­ty tax and traf­fic/park­ing tick­ets.

"Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will al­so be giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for school main­te­nance and lo­cal tourism, ex­am­ple the Dev­il's Wood­yard in the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion," Khan said.

The lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form doc­u­ment will be hand­ed over to Cab­i­net to­day for ap­proval.Khan said if it was ap­proved there would be two fi­nal con­sul­ta­tions in North and South which would al­so al­low pub­lic feed­back.


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