Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Al­der­men in the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion are rais­ing con­cerns that the Gov­ern­ment may be fa­cil­i­tat­ing sep­a­rate events by Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Ernesto Ke­sar, while the cor­po­ra­tion strug­gles to fund Bor­ough Day 2026.

Al­der­men Bryana For­tune-John and Kobe Sandy voiced their con­cerns fol­low­ing the cir­cu­la­tion of a me­dia in­vi­ta­tion for “Point Fortin Bor­ough Fuzion 2026,” list­ed un­der Ke­sar’s aus­pices. The event pro­motes six nights of free live per­for­mances, from April 25-May 2 fea­tur­ing top artistes and en­ter­tain­ers, prompt­ing ques­tions about fund­ing and co­or­di­na­tion with of­fi­cial Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions, sched­uled from April 11 to May 2.

Speak­ing dur­ing a Face­book Live broad­cast yes­ter­day, For­tune-John ques­tioned whether Ke­sar’s events will not clash with the cul­mi­na­tion of the Bor­ough Day fes­tiv­i­ties. She said out­stand­ing debts from Bor­ough Day 2025, Eman­ci­pa­tion 2025 and Car­ni­val 2025 al­so re­main un­re­solved, leav­ing the coun­cil in a strained fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

She re­called a meet­ing held in mid-2025 at the OW­TU build­ing in New­lands in­volv­ing the May­or, Deputy May­or and Ke­sar, who was then host­ing his own of­fice events. The meet­ing fo­cused on out­stand­ing pay­ments, and Ke­sar re­port­ed­ly com­mit­ted to lob­by­ing spon­sors, in­clud­ing Her­itage and NGC, to set­tle their oblig­a­tions.

Sandy said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about fund­ing pri­or­i­ties.

“Is the Gov­ern­ment giv­ing him fund­ing to do his own thing, and not what the peo­ple of Point Fortin look for­ward to?” he asked, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “to­tal dis­re­spect” to the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and res­i­dents.

“How could you tell us Bor­ough Day is over and then say you couldn’t get fund­ing? The on­ly com­pa­ny help­ing us is At­lantic En­er­gy for Pan on the Move. The mil­i­tary pa­rade is not done by the MP; it’s done by the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. We have no mon­ey to sup­port it.”

Sandy al­so point­ed to re­duced bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions.

“They slashed our cur­rent de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme to $5 mil­lion. We can hard­ly pay salaries or car­ry out rou­tine tasks. Usu­al­ly, Bor­ough Day ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing the mil­i­tary pa­rade, are fund­ed through this pro­gramme,” he said.

He added that de­spite sub­mit­ting fund­ing re­quests to sev­er­al min­istries at the MP’s di­rec­tion, in­clud­ing Cul­ture, Sport and Tourism, no re­spons­es have been re­ceived.

“His word holds no weight, and if it does, it is be­ing used de­lib­er­ate­ly to un­der­mine the coun­cil for po­lit­i­cal gain,” Sandy said.

For­tune-John said while Ke­sar ap­pears will­ing to as­sist, he may lack the in­flu­ence to se­cure full fund­ing.

“As a coun­cil, we can­not com­fort­ably in­cur new debt while out­stand­ing pay­ments for pre­vi­ous events re­main un­re­solved. Bor­ough Day 2026 must go on, but we need the re­sources to do it prop­er­ly,” she said.

She added that al­though par­tial pay­ments were made fol­low­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion 2025, many ser­vice providers re­main un­paid, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing plan­ning for up­com­ing events.

“I’m speak­ing as a con­cerned cit­i­zen so that the truth pre­vails and the com­mu­ni­ty un­der­stands the re­al­i­ty,” she said.

In re­sponse, how­ev­er, Ke­sar re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that his event would com­pete with of­fi­cial Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions.

“No, it will not ri­val Bor­ough Day. In fact, it will en­hance the cel­e­bra­tions, as it is not sched­uled in a way that con­flicts with their pro­gramme,” he said.

Ke­sar said he had de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ed in­ter­fer­ing with the cor­po­ra­tion’s plans.

“I made it clear from the be­gin­ning that I am not try­ing to in­ter­fere with their or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said, adding he was un­aware of the mul­ti­ple meet­ings ref­er­enced by the al­der­men.

He main­tained his fo­cus is on col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“I am ful­ly for co­op­er­a­tion and work­ing to­geth­er to en­sure this is suc­cess­ful. De­spite any ap­pre­hen­sion, I have the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to en­sure Bor­ough Day comes off suc­cess­ful­ly,” Ke­sar said.

With Bor­ough Day 2026 ap­proach­ing, the al­der­men are call­ing for ur­gent set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing pay­ments and con­fir­ma­tion of fund­ing, while Ke­sar has giv­en as­sur­ances that the cel­e­bra­tions will pro­ceed as planned. The emer­gence of sep­a­rate pro­mo­tion­al events has al­so in­ten­si­fied scruti­ny over fund­ing, co­or­di­na­tion and the man­age­ment of one of Point Fortin’s key an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tions.