MP for St Au­gus­tine, Ms. Khadi­jah Ameen in her bud­get con­tri­bu­tion in­di­cat­ed that the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment needs to be re­named the Min­istry of “Rur­al Ne­glect”, be­cause they have con­stant­ly failed and ne­glect­ed rur­al dis­tricts. De­tails fol­low in this press elease.

MP for St Au­gus­tine, Ms. Khadi­jah Ameen pas­sion­ate­ly high­light­ed the im­por­tance of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment on the de­vel­op­ment of the Na­tion as a whole and al­so its im­por­tance of im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of lives of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go in her bud­get con­tri­bu­tion. She in­di­cat­ed that the cur­rent Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment needs to be re­named the Min­istry of “Rur­al Ne­glect”, be­cause they have con­stant­ly failed and ne­glect­ed rur­al dis­tricts.

She stat­ed that there has been a dis­par­i­ty in fund­ing for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, where some cor­po­ra­tions clear­ly re­ceive more fund­ing per Burgess than oth­ers. For ex­am­ple, Port of Spain re­ceives $6000 per burgess per year while Tu­na­puna, Princess Town, Pe­nal/Debe and Cou­va re­ceive ap­prox­i­mate­ly, $700 per burgess per year. She al­so in­di­cat­ed that since the PNM came in­to gov­ern­ment in 2015 there has been con­stant ero­sion in fund­ing for Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions. For ex­am­ple, Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived a 40 mil­lion dol­lar de­crease in fund­ing from 2015-2022, this is a 25% re­duc­tion. In ad­di­tion to this rou­tine de­ple­tion of funds, she claims, the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment is ask­ing for a fur­ther 4% cut in fund­ing.

The UNC’s Shad­ow Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter called on the gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment poli­cies to pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and stop sti­fling the funds for Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions. She al­so asked that the gov­ern­ment pro­vide bet­ter re­sources to the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions so that some four­teen coun­cilors will not have to fight for the use of one back­hoe. Ms. Ameen lament­ed that it does not take new leg­is­la­tion to have prop­er treat­ment of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment fra­ter­ni­ty but it sim­ply takes po­lit­i­cal will.

In con­clu­sion, Ms. Ameen in­di­cat­ed that the cur­rent gov­ern­ment has bla­tant­ly aban­doned Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment. She claimed that the cur­rent PNM gov­ern­ment has failed to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of lo­cal gov­ern­ment in the na­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal plan of the coun­try. Last­ly, she said Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment must be giv­en the re­spect it de­serves.