As the fi­nan­cial year closed yes­ter­day, chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) Gow­tam Ma­haraj ad­mit­ted that no road­works were car­ried out over the past year, blam­ing fund­ing poli­cies un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion’s month­ly Statu­to­ry meet­ing held in Debe yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said the coun­cil had been left “cash-strapped.” In last year’s bud­get, he said the cor­po­ra­tion was al­lo­cat­ed $21 mil­lion for the 2024/2025 De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, but by mid-year had re­ceived on­ly $1.4 mil­lion.

“As a fi­nan­cial year-end re­view, we are sad­dened by the poli­cies of the last gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“In our de­vel­op­ment projects, we had flood mit­i­ga­tion works com­plet­ed, such as box drains, box cul­verts, and cross­ings, and we ex­pect­ed to pay for those ser­vices. But in the mid­dle of the night, a pol­i­cy came from the then min­istry say­ing that the pay­ments will be han­dled by the min­istry. Those monies nev­er came.”

He ex­plained that this left the cor­po­ra­tion in debt, with sup­pli­ers owed for goods and ser­vices.

“For the next fis­cal year, which is the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, no projects were able to be done. The pub­lic was robbed,” he said.

Ma­haraj added that road main­te­nance was among the hard­est-hit ar­eas.

“Over the last ten years, no work has been done in terms of road re­fur­bish­ment,” he said. “We were asked to sub­mit roads for the Sec­ondary Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny. Six­ty-two mil­lion dol­lars lat­er, not one sin­gle road in the re­gion was ad­dressed. That com­pa­ny was closed down with­out any ex­pla­na­tion,” he said.

Ma­haraj iden­ti­fied sev­er­al roads in poor con­di­tion, in­clud­ing Dig­i­ty Line Road, Lal­be­har­ry Trace, Solomon Knox Road, Rail­way Road, Dum­fries Road, and Bar­rack­pore Trace.

The chair­man al­so raised con­cerns over low al­lo­ca­tions for day-to-day ex­pens­es. “In some cas­es, un­der $10,000 was af­ford­ed to us to be able to do in-house work,” he said. “Our stock­piles are emp­ty. The Pe­nal stock­pile has been closed, and we have cen­tralised op­er­a­tions in the Debe stock­pile.”

He said san­i­ta­tion ser­vices al­so suf­fered.

“The draft es­ti­mate iden­ti­fied a par­tic­u­lar fig­ure, and less than 75 per cent of that fig­ure was al­lo­cat­ed,” Ma­haraj ex­plained, adding: “Where­as scav­eng­ing is a pre-known fig­ure, the over­all sum is fixed. To­day, on the last day of the fi­nan­cial year, we are scram­bling to fix that gap.”

Still, Ma­haraj said the cor­po­ra­tion was mak­ing in­ter­nal changes to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, in­clud­ing re­struc­tur­ing ceme­tery and recre­ation ground teams and mon­i­tor­ing work out­put more close­ly.

He al­so said mu­nic­i­pal po­lice strength would soon in­crease and promised greater fo­cus on curb­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate garbage dump­ing with a stronger lit­ter war­den unit.

Look­ing ahead to the 2026 bud­get, Ma­haraj said he re­mained hope­ful.

“We are op­ti­mistic that the bud­get will ad­dress some of these ma­jor de­fi­cien­cies.”