Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are seek­ing a Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view re­lief from the Gov­ern­ment.

With the re­view com­ing up, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen, who is fi­nal­is­ing sub­mis­sions for the Fi­nance Min­istry, will be meet­ing on Wednes­day with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions on their re­spec­tive po­si­tions.

This, as re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions—led by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)—are hop­ing for more mon­ey—par­tic­u­lar­ly to meet salary in­creas­es for work­ers giv­en by Gov­ern­ment; and to pay in­creased Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions.

Ameen spoke about Wednes­day’s meet­ing af­ter Guardian Me­dia queries yes­ter­day about con­cerns from some cor­po­ra­tions that ex­tra fund­ing is now nec­es­sary to cov­er the salary hikes Gov­ern­ment gave af­ter the 2026 Bud­get was de­liv­ered - and that al­lo­ca­tion for the NIS in­crease wasn’t catered for in the Bud­get.

Ameen said, “Mid-term re­view is com­ing up and we’re fi­nal­is­ing our sub­mis­sions for the Fi­nance Min­istry. I’m meet­ing with all cor­po­ra­tions on Wednes­day to­geth­er with per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and heads of oth­er sec­tors of the min­istry.

“The meet­ing was orig­i­nal­ly card­ed for Tues­day but it was shift­ed be­cause of the pub­lic hol­i­day on Mon­day. All chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers, chair­men and may­ors have been no­ti­fied.”

The mid-year re­view, pro­ject­ed for May, is ex­pect­ed to re­work some pro­jec­tions and plans in the 2026 Bud­get to cater for in­for­ma­tion the Fi­nance Min­istry re­ceived af­ter the Bud­get. It will al­so cater to fall­out from the US/Iran war.

Cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by the Op­po­si­tion PNM—with the loud­est com­plaints on their cur­rent fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion—are hop­ing for “re­view re­lief.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the sit­u­a­tion, San Juan/Laven­tille re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion vice chair­man Kwe­si An­toine said, “Every­thing’s at a stand­still in T&T since last April and worse by us in the cor­po­ra­tion - we don’t even have mon­ey to buy ma­te­ri­als, much less to cov­er the in­creas­es Gov­ern­ment put on NIS con­tri­bu­tions and for work­ers. We have less fund­ing for scav­eng­ing/garbage col­lec­tion; as a re­sult, our area has a ro­dent epi­dem­ic.”

An­toine added, “Al­so, we’re one of the sev­en cor­po­ra­tions—PNM and UNC—that didn’t get back­pay last year. It is day-to-day for us in this cor­po­ra­tion.”

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said, “We were cut by $4.4M and for the re­view, we’re not seek­ing more than that. We have a lot of short­falls, we’re com­mit­ted to pay­ing the Con­trac­tors and Work­ers Gen­er­al Trade Union their in­crease, al­so the PSA and NUFGW’s and we’re al­so com­mit­ted to pay­ing what­ev­er bills we’ve ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over time due to the fund­ing cut—it’s so much we can’t quan­ti­fy.”

He added, “We can­not buy ba­sic goods - toi­let pa­per, ink, print­ing pa­per - we’re tak­ing things on ‘trust’. My of­fice, in the last nine months, has been print­ing with blue and ma­gen­ta. We lack prop­er sup­plies. We raised $600,000 in our auc­tion of old ve­hi­cles last year but have no ac­cess, as the min­istry hasn’t ap­proved spend­ing it. So, our ve­hi­cle fleet is ground­ed. Plus, UNC ru­mours are be­ing spread about us to dis­tract from the fact that the Gov­ern­ment’s cut­ting the $4.4m is what is caus­ing the cor­po­ra­tion prob­lems.”

Ari­ma deputy may­or Jo­van Roberts said mat­ters like the NUGFW and PSA in­creas­es, and the NIS con­tri­bu­tion in­creas­es, were not catered for in the 2026 Bud­get.

“We know the Prime Min­is­ter in Jan­u­ary said cor­po­ra­tions won’t re­ceive ad­di­tion­al fund­ing be­yond ex­ist­ing al­lo­ca­tions, but to meet the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for work­ers on these is­sues—aris­ing from her Gov­ern­ment’s man­dates in the var­i­ous ar­eas—there are sim­ply no funds. Our al­lo­ca­tions aren’t as large as some UNC cor­po­ra­tions’. They can shift around funds. We don’t have that ca­pa­bil­i­ty,” Roberts said.

Tu­na­puna cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin said, “The al­lo­ca­tions we got can’t work when we have in­creased NIS con­tri­bu­tions and the salary in­creas­es for work­ers to meet. It had been dif­fi­cult as it is, es­pe­cial­ly with in­ad­e­quate scav­eng­ing fund­ing and for per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture— and there are now com­mit­ments that came af­ter the Bud­get.”

Point Fortin cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Clyde An­tho­ny said they have been try­ing to work around the is­sues.

“We’ve been work­ing strate­gi­cal­ly, plan­ning to cov­er our needs, but there may be a short­fall for our cor­po­ra­tion,” An­tho­ny said.

Port-of-Spain coun­cil­lors said the cor­po­ra­tion serv­ing the cap­i­tal is al­so “un­der pres­sure!” They par­tic­u­lar­ly cit­ed prob­lems with scav­eng­ing/garbage col­lec­tion due to the cut­back. Diego Mar­tin’s Ake­li­ah Glas­gow didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day.

Among UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions, of­fi­cials in the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro and Princes Town bod­ies ac­knowl­edged there could be fund­ing is­sues in their re­spec­tive cor­po­ra­tions re­gard­ing mat­ters which were not catered for in the Bud­get.

Pe­nal-Debe cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj said, “Yes, we’ll be putting in for more fund­ing, for the in­creased NIS pay­ments and the wage and salary hike re­quire­ments.”

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo, who was at an East­er event yes­ter­day, said there is rou­tine­ly an an­nu­al ex­er­cise for all cor­po­ra­tions to as­sess their fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and make re­quests where they have short­falls, be­fore the mid-year re­view.

“Cor­po­ra­tions al­ways need fund­ing; you don’t ever get the full amount one time,” he said.

Mayrhoo con­firmed that Siparia would seek ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for the NUGFW and PSA salary/wage hikes.

“They were not catered for in the 2026 Bud­get. But we’re specif­i­cal­ly re­quest­ing the $6 mil­lion in fund­ing for scav­eng­ing/garbage col­lec­tion, which was owed to us since the PNM gov­ern­ment days.”

How­ev­er, he said the Siparia cor­po­ra­tion didn’t have a prob­lem cater­ing for the in­creased NIS con­tri­bu­tions.

“We got some re­leas­es last week and we’ll be able to pay some of our bills,” Mayrhoo said.

San­gre Grande cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials said usu­al­ly, they’re able to car­ry on with al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing, but ad­mit­ted “a lit­tle more will be need­ed for this fis­cal year, since some per­sons are re­tir­ing, so the cor­po­ra­tion will need funds to cov­er that.”