Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen has dis­missed claims by Op­po­si­tion PNM mem­bers that re­duc­tions in over­time al­lo­ca­tions for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers and oth­er cuts in fund­ing at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion will crip­ple op­er­a­tions dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods such as Christ­mas and Car­ni­val.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ses­sion in Par­lia­ment, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young raised con­cern that de­creas­es in the al­lo­ca­tion could ham­per the cor­po­ra­tion’s abil­i­ty to main­tain es­sen­tial ser­vices dur­ing high-de­mand pe­ri­ods. Young ar­gued that such re­duc­tions could af­fect garbage col­lec­tion, street clean­ing, and gen­er­al main­te­nance dur­ing key na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tions.

"This is es­sen­tial in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, util­i­sa­tion of over­time in the car­ni­val pe­ri­od and oth­er pub­lic hol­i­days, where you are re­quir­ing work­ers to come out af­ter hours, in the wee hours of the morn­ing. Why has this par­tic­u­lar item been de­creased across the board?"

Min­is­ter Ameen, how­ev­er, re­butted the as­ser­tions, call­ing Young’s com­ments “alarmist” and as­sur­ing that sys­tems ex­ist to en­sure smooth op­er­a­tions even if ad­di­tion­al fund­ing is re­quired.

“This mi­nor de­crease of $120,000 will not im­pact the work that has to be done be­cause our CEOs have a sys­tem where, if over­time is re­quired they have to give ap­provals be­fore­hand but if there is need to ex­ceed this amount it will be sup­ple­ment­ed,” Ameen said, em­pha­siz­ing that there are es­tab­lished mech­a­nisms for lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies to ob­tain ad­di­tion­al re­sources when nec­es­sary.

How­ev­er, Young pushed back and not­ed that mit­i­gat­ing the fall­out from the re­duc­tions will not be as easy as Min­is­ter Ameen sug­gest­ed.

"What we are see­ing here and what we are draw­ing to the min­is­ter's at­ten­tion, this di­rect cut­ting of over­time is go­ing to col­lapse the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and to sim­ply say you can vire from oth­er ar­eas is not true be­cause it is not on­ly this area that is re­duced, the whole bud­get for the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion has re­duced so there is no ex­cess."

Ameen added that the al­lo­ca­tion process is da­ta-dri­ven and trans­par­ent, and that the min­istry con­tin­ues to sup­port all lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

"I have made vis­its to Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, and even their main of­fice is less than sat­is­fac­to­ry to what they need be­cause they have been un­der­fund­ed in terms of do­ing mi­nor re­pairs in the build­ing to the point where the union has raised is­sues. So if we have to talk about in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the cor­po­ra­tion, what I have to say is that I give my com­mit­ment to work with each cor­po­ra­tion, in­clud­ing the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion, to ad­dress their is­sues in a holis­tic way to help them con­tin­ue to be ef­fi­cient in their work."

Ameen’s re­marks come amid on­go­ing Op­po­si­tion claims that Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions have been short­changed in this year’s Bud­get, with par­tic­u­lar ac­cu­sa­tions that the cap­i­tal city of Port-of-Spain has been de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der-bud­get­ed.

The min­is­ter al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about se­cu­ri­ty, stat­ing that pub­lic safe­ty will not be com­pro­mised. She not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly work­ing to strength­en the com­ple­ment of mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers, re­duc­ing re­liance on pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty con­trac­tors.

"You see this thing called se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, there are some par­tic­u­lar se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies run by per­sons close to for­mer min­is­ters who had a feed­ing fren­zy in al­most every gov­ern­ment agency, and when we add up the thou­sands, it goes in­to the mil­lions  of dol­lars of per­sons who pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices when there were gov­ern­ment work­ers who could have done it."