Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer min­is­ter of rur­al de­vel­op­ment and lo­cal gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi has added his voice to mount­ing con­cerns over fund­ing short­falls across cor­po­ra­tions, call­ing on cur­rent min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen to “wake up.”

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of lo­cal gov­ern­ment fi­nances, ac­cus­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of un­der­fund­ing cor­po­ra­tions and al­low­ing in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vices to de­te­ri­o­rate.

“What I can tell you about lo­cal gov­ern­ment is the sav­agery that’s go­ing on in San Fer­nan­do and Tu­na­puna,” he said. “The fool­ish­ness that Khadi­jah Ameen is speak­ing about, ‘stop par­ty­ing’, what rub­bish are we talk­ing about?”

Al-Rawi claimed that cor­po­ra­tions tra­di­tion­al­ly man­aged by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed by bud­get cuts.

“The lo­cal gov­ern­ment PNM-held cor­po­ra­tions were slashed, the city of Port-of-Spain re­ceived $4 mil­lion for the whole year to do all of its pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment pro­gramme works,” he said.

“Ms Ameen is play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness. While you dri­ve around the city, you will see it falling apart. You dri­ve through the rest of Trinidad, you will see it falling apart.”

He fur­ther al­leged dis­crim­i­na­tion in the al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources.

The for­mer min­is­ter al­so warned of op­er­a­tional break­downs with­in cor­po­ra­tions.

“Work­ers can­not be paid, salaries are not hap­pen­ing, clean­ing can­not hap­pen, our cities and our towns fall in­to ab­solute dis­ar­ray,” he said, adding, “Ms Ameen, wake up and stop dis­crim­i­nat­ing against the cor­po­ra­tions.”

Al-Rawi al­so took aim at the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er fis­cal man­age­ment, pre­dict­ing a mid-year bud­get re­view from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

“I guar­an­tee you there is go­ing to come a mid-year re­view, which means that they will have com­plete­ly failed in what they said they could do,” he said.

His com­ments come amid an in­ten­si­fy­ing war of words be­tween Ameen and Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, who re­cent­ly warned of a fi­nan­cial cri­sis af­fect­ing all 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

In a Face­book post on Sat­ur­day, Al­leyne de­scribed a “fis­cal fi­as­co” stem­ming from the 2026 Bud­get, claim­ing cor­po­ra­tions are strug­gling to meet ba­sic oblig­a­tions.

He warned that the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion could soon be un­able to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, Ameen has strong­ly re­ject­ed those claims.

“The May­or’s claims are rub­bish,” she told Guardian Me­dia, in­sist­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed deeply in­debt­ed cor­po­ra­tions.

“The UNC Gov­ern­ment met re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions’ mil­lions of dol­lars in debt due to in­suf­fi­cient bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions, and even where there were al­lo­ca­tions, a sup­pres­sion of fund­ing by not re­leas­ing mon­ey to the cor­po­ra­tions.”

She point­ed to long­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties, in­clud­ing mil­lions owed for scav­eng­ing ser­vices and ar­rears to T&TEC, ar­gu­ing these is­sues pre­date the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ameen said her min­istry is work­ing to sta­bilise the sec­tor, in­clud­ing en­gag­ing mu­nic­i­pal lead­ers ahead of a pos­si­ble mid-term re­view.

She al­so de­fend­ed her con­tro­ver­sial “stop par­ty­ing” com­ment, stat­ing, “Debt man­age­ment has to in­clude pri­ori­tis­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery over throw­ing a fete.”

But Al-Rawi dis­missed that po­si­tion, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of aban­don­ing key re­forms in­tro­duced dur­ing his tenure, in­clud­ing dig­i­tal tools to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.