Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Hun­dreds of work­ers in Port-of-Spain have been sent home from land­scap­ing, street clean­ing and com­mu­ni­ty main­te­nance pro­grammes, leav­ing the cap­i­tal strug­gling to main­tain es­sen­tial ser­vices, May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has re­vealed.

Speak­ing at a Port-of-Spain Statu­to­ry Meet­ing yes­ter­day, Al­leyne said more than 500 work­ers were dis­missed and re­placed by just 12 staff mem­bers — a move he warned could jeop­ar­dise pub­lic health, san­i­ta­tion and pub­lic safe­ty.

He added that tens of thou­sands of sim­i­lar work­ers have been af­fect­ed across Trinidad.

“These cuts will cre­ate se­ri­ous chal­lenges for the City Cor­po­ra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as we pre­pare for Car­ni­val 2026,” Al­leyne said.

“In the city alone, more than 500 peo­ple who were do­ing day-to-day work clean­ing and main­tain­ing our com­mu­ni­ties have been sent home. They have been re­placed with 12 work­ers. In our view, the health and well­ness of the peo­ple of Port-of-Spain are be­ing put at risk.”

The may­or at­trib­uted the sit­u­a­tion to dras­tic bud­get re­duc­tions, in­clud­ing an al­most 80 per cent cut in in­fra­struc­ture fund­ing and a 40 per cent re­duc­tion in garbage col­lec­tion al­lo­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Al­leyne, these cuts mean the cor­po­ra­tion is un­able to set­tle out­stand­ing debts from pre­vi­ous projects or un­der­take new in­fra­struc­tur­al work through­out fis­cal 2026.

He al­so raised con­cerns about what he de­scribed as an un­even dis­tri­b­u­tion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­sources. While Port-of-Spain has suf­fered steep re­duc­tions, oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties have re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es. Garbage col­lec­tion fund­ing in one mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty near­ly dou­bled, while Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough record­ed an in­crease of more than 120 per cent in its in­fra­struc­ture bud­get, he said.

De­spite the chal­lenges, Al­leyne as­sured res­i­dents and vis­i­tors that the City Coun­cil re­mains com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing a suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val.

“Notwith­stand­ing un­prece­dent­ed in­ter­fer­ence in street clean­ing, em­ploy­ment and garbage col­lec­tion, the coun­cil has re­solved to do what­ev­er it takes to en­sure Car­ni­val 2026 is more suc­cess­ful than Car­ni­val 2025. Rest as­sured, when Ash Wednes­day comes, the pub­lic will see a clean cap­i­tal city,” he said.

He urged cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, promis­ing a safe, se­cure and wel­com­ing city through­out the fes­ti­val sea­son.