GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of re­duc­ing fund­ing for garbage col­lec­tion and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment projects, ar­gu­ing that in­creas­es high­light­ed in the 2027 Bud­get are large­ly be­ing used to cov­er back­pay oblig­a­tions rather than im­prove ser­vices for res­i­dents.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at City Hall, Port-of-Spain on Fri­day night, Al­leyne said claims that mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions had re­ceived in­creased al­lo­ca­tions were mis­lead­ing, as much of the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing was ear­marked for salary set­tle­ments and wage agree­ments.

Ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers, the may­or sought to ex­plain the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and de­vel­op­ment spend­ing, ar­gu­ing that on­ly one of those cat­e­gories di­rect­ly trans­lates in­to im­prove­ments in com­mu­ni­ties.

“The in­crease that we got in the re­cur­rent bud­get is for back­pay,” he said. “That is the mon­ey that the Gov­ern­ment owes pub­lic ser­vants. We can’t build roads with back­pay.”

Ac­cord­ing to Al­leyne, the City Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al $7.2 mil­lion for salaries and cost-of-liv­ing al­lowances and a fur­ther $56.8 mil­lion for wages and CO­LA.

How­ev­er, he said those in­creas­es were in­tend­ed to meet out­stand­ing pay­ment oblig­a­tions to pub­lic ser­vants and dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers rather than fund projects or ser­vices.

The may­or’s sharpest crit­i­cism cen­tred on fund­ing for garbage col­lec­tion.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion’s al­lo­ca­tion un­der goods and ser­vices, which cov­ers key op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing refuse col­lec­tion, had been re­duced by al­most $3 mil­lion.

“Whilst we got an in­crease for salaries and wages, when it comes to the mon­ey to col­lect garbage, they cut our mon­ey again to pick up rub­bish,” Al­leyne said.

He ar­gued that goods and ser­vices ex­pen­di­ture has a more di­rect im­pact on res­i­dents be­cause it funds every­day mu­nic­i­pal op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing waste col­lec­tion and main­te­nance.

Al­leyne al­so claimed the re­duc­tions were not lim­it­ed to Port-of-Spain but af­fect­ed sev­er­al lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies.

He said de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme fund­ing, which fi­nances projects such as road re­pairs, drainage works, play­ground up­grades and ma­jor mu­nic­i­pal in­fra­struc­ture, had been sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by the PNM.

Us­ing Port-of-Spain as an ex­am­ple, Al­leyne said the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion in de­vel­op­ment fund­ing un­der the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion’s bud­get.

He said that al­lo­ca­tion was re­duced to $4.1 mil­lion last year and has now been cut fur­ther to $2.6 mil­lion.

The may­or not­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion cur­rent­ly owes con­trac­tors about $5 mil­lion, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to ad­vance projects with the re­duced al­lo­ca­tion.

He al­so cit­ed de­clines in de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for Ari­ma, San Fer­nan­do, Diego Mar­tin, Point Fortin, San Juan/Laven­tille and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co.

Ac­cord­ing to Al­leyne, the com­bined de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tion for sev­en PNM-led cor­po­ra­tions amounts to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $31.5 mil­lion, de­spite those mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties ac­count­ing for rough­ly half of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion.

In con­trast, he point­ed to al­lo­ca­tions for Princes Town, Ch­agua­nas and Pe­nal/Debe, each of which re­ceived more than $37 mil­lion in de­vel­op­ment fund­ing.

Al­leyne ar­gued that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fund­ing amount­ed to dis­crim­i­na­tion based on ge­og­ra­phy and said res­i­dents in PNM-held mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties were be­ing un­fair­ly treat­ed.

He al­so ref­er­enced the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, cur­rent­ly con­trolled by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), not­ing that its al­lo­ca­tion had al­so been re­duced.

The may­or called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­store de­vel­op­ment fund­ing to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, main­tain­ing that com­mu­ni­ties re­quire in­vest­ment in roads, drainage, pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture rather than mere­ly fund­ing wage set­tle­ments.

He said res­i­dents ul­ti­mate­ly judge lo­cal gov­ern­ment per­for­mance based on the qual­i­ty of ser­vices they re­ceive, in­clud­ing reg­u­lar garbage col­lec­tion, and warned that re­duced op­er­a­tional and de­vel­op­ment fund­ing would af­fect the abil­i­ty of cor­po­ra­tions to de­liv­er for their com­mu­ni­ties.

In her con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment, Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen de­fend­ed the cur­rent al­lo­ca­tions, say­ing the PNM was guilty of ge­o­graph­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion as well.

Ameen cit­ed fig­ures from the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, claim­ing that un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, con­tracts were con­cen­trat­ed in con­stituen­cies such as Diego Mar­tin West and San Fer­nan­do West, while sev­er­al rur­al com­mu­ni­ties re­ceived none.

She said 26 con­tracts worth $29.97 mil­lion were award­ed in Diego Mar­tin West and 37 con­tracts worth $38 mil­lion in San Fer­nan­do West. She con­trast­ed this with Cu­mu­to, Man­zanil­la, Ma­yaro, Fyz­abad, Oropouche East, Oropouche West and Princes Town, which she said re­ceived no con­tracts.

Ameen al­so com­pared mu­nic­i­pal al­lo­ca­tions, say­ing Port-of-Spain re­ceived $212 mil­lion in the fi­nal year of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, com­pared with $295 mil­lion un­der the UNC. She said Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co's al­lo­ca­tion in­creased from $161 mil­lion to $222 mil­lion.

She re­ject­ed claims that PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions were be­ing un­fair­ly treat­ed, ar­gu­ing that ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for oth­er con­stituen­cies rep­re­sent­ed de­vel­op­ment re­sources rather than dou­ble dip­ping.

Ameen said the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion's ap­proach had al­lowed some ar­eas to ben­e­fit re­peat­ed­ly, adding that the cur­rent gov­ern­ment was lev­el­ling the play­ing field.