Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen has sought to re­as­sure work­ers at­tached to the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion that their salaries will be paid, dis­miss­ing con­cerns raised by Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne over the cor­po­ra­tion’s abil­i­ty to meet pay­roll oblig­a­tions in the com­ing months.

Speak­ing in re­sponse to com­ments made by the may­or yes­ter­day, Ameen said there was “no is­sue” re­gard­ing the pay­ment of pub­lic ser­vants and ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of at­tempt­ing to cre­ate un­nec­es­sary con­cern.

“You know, I am start­ing to feel sor­ry for these PNM peo­ple who are get­ting very des­per­ate. It’s very clear. There is no is­sue about pay­ing pub­lic ser­vants,” Ameen said.

“Monies are nor­mal­ly re­leased in tranch­es from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, through the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, to the re­spec­tive cor­po­ra­tions. That has been go­ing on for decades. All pub­lic ser­vants will be paid.”

Her com­ments came af­ter Al­leyne told Guardian Me­dia that while all pub­lic ser­vants em­ployed by the City Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived their full salaries for May, the cor­po­ra­tion had been ad­vised by its Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and City Trea­sur­er that it lacked suf­fi­cient fund­ing to pay work­ers in June and had no al­lo­ca­tion avail­able for Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to Al­leyne, the cor­po­ra­tion has al­ready sought ur­gent as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

“The CEO has en­gaged the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, seek­ing the min­istry’s ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure that the city is pro­vid­ed with the al­lo­ca­tion re­quired to meet pay­roll for pub­lic ser­vants for the rest of the fi­nan­cial year. We are still await­ing a favourable re­sponse,” he said.

The may­or at­trib­uted the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges to what he de­scribed as “bad bud­get­ing,” ar­gu­ing that salary in­creas­es and ad­vance back-pay­ments to pub­lic ser­vants ap­proved in late 2025 were not ad­e­quate­ly pro­vid­ed for in the na­tion­al bud­get.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert echoed those con­cerns dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, claim­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies were in­struct­ed to ab­sorb in­creased wage costs and back-pay oblig­a­tions with­out re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tions.

“What they did to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies is they told them that they have to pay it. So cor­po­ra­tions like the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion were in­struct­ed to pay the first in­stal­ment of the back pay and al­so pay the in­creased salaries with­out an al­lo­ca­tion,” he said.

Im­bert ar­gued that re­gion­al bod­ies such as the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion had been forced to redi­rect funds ear­marked for de­vel­op­ment projects and in­fra­struc­ture works to cov­er per­son­nel ex­pens­es.

“The Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing mon­ey out of the cor­po­ra­tions from crit­i­cal ar­eas and telling them that has to be used to pay for these things,” he said.

He added that cor­po­ra­tions were be­ing forced to di­vert mon­ey from pro­grammes aimed at re­pair­ing roads and main­tain­ing wa­ter­cours­es.

How­ev­er, Ameen main­tained that the sit­u­a­tion re­flect­ed stan­dard gov­ern­ment pro­ce­dures rather than a fund­ing cri­sis.

“All cor­po­ra­tions are re­quired to send their re­quests for re­leas­es to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and it is then sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Fi­nance, and re­leas­es are made ac­cord­ing­ly,” she ex­plained.

“It is nor­mal in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion for the CEO to send re­quests for funds, and we process them as we usu­al­ly do. It is not some­thing that we per­son­al­ly re­spond to with every re­quest. It is a mat­ter of process where we re­ceive the re­quest and for­ward it to Fi­nance, and the Min­istry of Fi­nance then makes the re­lease.”

The min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed that work­ers should not be con­cerned, in­sist­ing that all pub­lic ser­vants at­tached to lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions would con­tin­ue to re­ceive their salaries as the es­tab­lished fund­ing process un­folds.