KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man Josi­ah Austin has re­ject­ed state­ments by Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, de­scrib­ing as “false and mis­lead­ing” the sug­ges­tion that cor­po­ra­tions are pri­ori­tis­ing cul­tur­al events over con­trac­tor pay­ments.

Austin’s re­sponse fol­lows Ameen’s warn­ing that mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions should avoid dis­cre­tionary spend­ing while car­ry­ing sig­nif­i­cant ar­rears, in­clud­ing her re­mark that they should “not throw a fete” while ow­ing mon­ey, as debts across the sys­tem ap­proach an es­ti­mat­ed $1 bil­lion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Austin said un­paid con­trac­tor bal­ances—par­tic­u­lar­ly for scav­eng­ing ser­vices—are a long­stand­ing is­sue root­ed in in­ad­e­quate fund­ing al­lo­ca­tions from cen­tral gov­ern­ment, rather than mis­man­age­ment at cor­po­ra­tion lev­el.

“Out­stand­ing pay­ments to scav­eng­ing con­trac­tors are a peren­ni­al is­sue, one that ex­ist­ed even dur­ing the min­is­ter’s own tenure as chair­man of the TPRC. Mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions are legal­ly bound to op­er­ate with­in al­lo­ca­tions ap­proved by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, and when al­lo­ca­tions fall short of con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, deficits are in­evitable. This is a na­tion­al fund­ing is­sue, not a TPRC fail­ure,” he said.

He stressed that funds al­lo­cat­ed for con­tract­ed ser­vices can­not be di­vert­ed to cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties, not­ing such pro­grammes are fi­nanced through ap­proved bud­get votes, the Chair­man’s Fund (with Min­istry of Fi­nance ap­proval), do­na­tions and pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships.

Austin al­so de­fend­ed the role of cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, re­ject­ing the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of such ac­tiv­i­ties as friv­o­lous spend­ing.

“The min­is­ter’s at­tempt to frame cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion as ir­re­spon­si­ble spend­ing is deeply un­fair. Cul­tur­al pro­grammes are not fetes; they are le­git­i­mate ini­tia­tives that up­lift com­mu­ni­ties, sup­port NGOs and pre­serve na­tion­al iden­ti­ty,” he said.

Austin fur­ther point­ed to what he de­scribed as in­con­sis­ten­cies, not­ing that state-sup­port­ed ini­tia­tives have con­tin­ued de­spite re­ports of un­paid work­ers.

“The re­al­i­ty is that de­layed con­trac­tor pay­ments stem from in­suf­fi­cient al­lo­ca­tions and de­lays in the re­lease of funds from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. No­tably, the al­lo­ca­tion for scav­eng­ing ser­vices at TPRC was sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in fis­cal 2025/2026,” he said.

As de­bate con­tin­ues over how to ad­dress the grow­ing fi­nan­cial strain on mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, Point Fortin May­or Clyde James said Gov­ern­ment should re­con­sid­er prop­er­ty tax as a po­ten­tial rev­enue stream. James said all cor­po­ra­tions are fac­ing sim­i­lar fi­nan­cial con­straints, with al­lo­ca­tions of­ten in­suf­fi­cient to meet both re­cur­rent and de­vel­op­ment needs.

“To be frank, each cor­po­ra­tion has debt, and what­ev­er al­lo­ca­tion the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides is not enough for re­cur­rent and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes,” James said.

He ex­plained that de­lays in fund­ing un­der pro­grammes such as the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (NDP) of­ten re­sult in out­stand­ing in­voic­es rolling over in­to the fol­low­ing fis­cal year, leav­ing cor­po­ra­tions ef­fec­tive­ly start­ing with deficits. He said the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived $5.5 mil­lion for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for fis­cal 2026 but had out­stand­ing debt of $4.89 mil­lion, leav­ing rough­ly $600,000 avail­able.

“There is very lit­tle we can do un­der that vote. Re­gard­ing re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, back pay for work­ers and ad­just­ments to salaries and rates this year de­plet­ed oth­er al­lo­ca­tions, re­sult­ing in a short­fall. That is why we held that meet­ing—to sub­mit our fig­ures so the Min­istry can as­sess the gaps and for­ward them to the Min­istry of Fi­nance,” he said.

Prop­er­ty tax was scrapped fol­low­ing the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, ful­fill­ing a cam­paign promise by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The tax had been rein­tro­duced un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, with val­u­a­tion no­tices is­sued in 2023 and col­lec­tions be­gin­ning in 2024, aimed at pro­vid­ing a sta­ble rev­enue stream for pub­lic ser­vices and de­vel­op­ment.

How­ev­er, James said the ab­sence of that rev­enue has com­pound­ed op­er­a­tional chal­lenges, in­clud­ing main­tain­ing age­ing ve­hi­cle fleets and sus­tain­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery.

Austin main­tained that cur­tail­ing cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties would not re­solve the un­der­ly­ing fund­ing is­sues and ar­gued that, if ap­plied broad­ly, such a po­si­tion would pre­vent state agen­cies from host­ing events while car­ry­ing out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties.

He said the TPRC re­mains com­mit­ted to meet­ing its oblig­a­tions as funds are re­leased, sup­port­ing con­trac­tors and con­tin­u­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives with­in the law.