Frus­tra­tion is mount­ing across re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, as the is­sue of back­pay for coun­cil­lors and al­der­men re­mains un­set­tled, with less than half of the coun­try’s 14 cor­po­ra­tions re­port­ed­ly paid to date.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, on­ly sev­en cor­po­ra­tions have re­ceived funds so far: Point Fortin; Siparia; Princes Town; Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro; Diego Mar­tin; Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co and Pe­nal/Debe.

San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip yes­ter­day con­firmed that his coun­cil was yet to be paid.

“We didn’t get any, no. I don’t know, let me try and find out for you now,” Phillip said when con­tact­ed, not­ing that au­dits at his cor­po­ra­tion were com­plet­ed on time.

He ex­plained that com­pli­ca­tions arose af­ter some com­mit­tees were al­leged­ly over­paid in er­ror, prompt­ing fur­ther de­duc­tions and ex­tend­ed re­views.

“Then we had that meet­ing with the CPO; we would have cleared the air on that. And they went back out to do au­dit­ing. And they keep pro­long­ing the sys­tem,” Phillip said.

De­spite min­istry as­sur­ances of ex­pe­dit­ed pay­ments, con­fu­sion re­mains over which cor­po­ra­tions were in­clud­ed in ear­li­er dis­burse­ments.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed con­firmed that the Ch­agua­nas cor­po­ra­tion was not among those to re­ceive pay­ments but said staff were told the mat­ter would be re­solved prompt­ly.

At­tempts to reach Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er, who is al­so chair­man of the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Au­thor­i­ties (TTAL­GA), for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment be­gan the process of retroac­tive pay­ments ear­li­er this year, but the ini­tia­tive has been plagued by de­lays.

Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are still fi­nal­is­ing cal­cu­la­tions, with dis­crep­an­cies over en­ti­tle­ments—par­tic­u­lar­ly stipends for com­mit­tees out­side of stand­ing com­mit­tees—slow­ing the process. Au­di­tors have raised ques­tions about the le­git­i­ma­cy of these pay­ments, fur­ther de­lay­ing dis­burse­ment.

The min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary has in­di­cat­ed that the out­stand­ing pay­ments are ex­pect­ed to be made by No­vem­ber, though no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion has been giv­en.

Ef­forts to reach Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin and Min­is­ter Ameen for fur­ther com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.