RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Al­der­man Vil­liana Ra­moutars­ingh clashed with San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris yes­ter­day af­ter she was blocked from rais­ing a se­ries of ques­tions at a statu­to­ry meet­ing, prompt­ing a pub­lic con­fronta­tion over fi­nan­cial trans­paren­cy, mar­ket con­di­tions and the treat­ment of ca­su­al work­ers.

Ra­moutars­ingh said she at­tempt­ed to raise the mat­ters dur­ing the meet­ing but was shut down by Par­ris, who ruled that it was “not the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum.”

Ac­cord­ing to the al­der­man, the is­sues had al­ready been raised re­peat­ed­ly at the com­mit­tee lev­el with­out a re­sponse.

Fol­low­ing the ad­journ­ment, Ra­moutars­ingh, along with fel­low UNC coun­cil­lors Sasha Ali, Rishi Bal­ram­s­ingh and Kern Ramdin, took their con­cerns to the me­dia, call­ing for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.

Cen­tral to Ra­moutars­ingh’s con­cerns was the lack of fi­nan­cial re­port­ing for Car­ni­val 2026 and City Month 2025.

She ques­tioned when coun­cil­lors would re­ceive a for­mal bud­get and a full in­come and ex­pen­di­ture state­ment for both events.

She al­so asked how much is cur­rent­ly owed to ven­dors and ser­vice providers, and what rev­enue was gen­er­at­ed from fundrais­ing ini­tia­tives linked to the events.

“Up to now, we have seen no prop­er break­down of spend­ing for the last three years,” she said.

An­oth­er ma­jor is­sue was the re­port­ed sus­pen­sion of ca­su­al work­ers from March 26, which Ra­moutars­ingh warned could sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact drain clean­ing, bulk waste col­lec­tion and com­mu­ni­ty clean-up ef­forts.

Coun­cil­lor Sasha Ali sup­port­ed the con­cerns, al­leg­ing un­fair treat­ment and a lack of trans­paren­cy in the se­lec­tion process.

She claimed some coun­cil­lors were ex­clud­ed from sub­mit­ting names for work­ers, while oth­ers were not.

In re­sponse, Par­ris dis­missed the al­le­ga­tions and crit­i­cised Ra­moutars­ingh’s con­duct, say­ing she be­haved in a man­ner “un­be­com­ing of a mem­ber of coun­cil.”

He main­tained that Car­ni­val fi­nances fall un­der a com­mit­tee struc­ture re­port­ing to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), and au­dit­ed re­ports are sub­mit­ted ac­cord­ing­ly.

“No ven­dors are owed any­thing,” he added.

On the is­sue of ca­su­al work­ers, Par­ris de­nied any sus­pen­sion, ex­plain­ing that the ad­min­is­tra­tion was man­ag­ing lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources and tem­porar­i­ly re­strict­ing the sub­mis­sion of names to en­sure fund­ing for flood mit­i­ga­tion and drain clean­ing pro­grammes.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims of po­lit­i­cal bias, in­sist­ing de­ci­sions were be­ing made in the best in­ter­est of the city.

He claimed that Ra­moutars­ingh want­ed to be May­or and was try­ing to tar­nish his rep­u­ta­tion.