Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has re­ject­ed claims that any project plans have stalled due to a lack of prop­er­ty tax funds.

But while the min­istry in­sists that mu­nic­i­pal work is con­tin­u­ing, it of­fered no clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether short-term jobs pro­posed dur­ing a re­cent meet­ing can pro­ceed un­der ex­ist­ing bud­get rules or how they will be fund­ed go­ing for­ward.

“The pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of the meet­ing con­vened by the Ho­n­ourable Khadi­jah Ameen was to en­sure that all mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions were on track with their al­lo­ca­tions and prop­er­ly sub­mit­ted fund­ing re­quests,” the min­istry said in a re­lease in re­sponse to a sto­ry in yes­ter­day’s pa­per head­lined, “Ameen’s project plans stall with­out prop­er­ty tax funds.”

Not­ing that the head­line mis­rep­re­sent­ed the in­tent of the meet­ing, the min­istry claimed that prop­er­ty tax was “on­ly briefly men­tioned” dur­ing the ses­sion. It added that Min­is­ter Ameen was al­so not re­ly­ing on those funds to im­ple­ment new ini­tia­tives.

The Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle re­port­ed that Vote 02/001/48 had been dis­cussed as a po­ten­tial ve­hi­cle for projects, and that fund­ing un­der that vote is cur­rent­ly in­ac­ces­si­ble.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia the min­is­ter had not is­sued any di­rec­tive but had “thought out loud” about pos­si­ble job cre­ation ini­tia­tives and asked cor­po­ra­tions to send in ideas. He al­so con­firmed that Vote 02/001/48 was dis­cussed, and that its link to un­fund­ed prop­er­ty tax rev­enue re­mains a prac­ti­cal bar­ri­er.

Yes­ter­day, the min­istry al­so did not say whether cor­po­ra­tions will gain ac­cess to the $135 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax rev­enue col­lect­ed be­fore the re­peal of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), nor did it ad­dress how the Gov­ern­ment’s hir­ing freeze ap­plies to the em­ploy­ment ideas dis­cussed.

A May 16 memo from act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Mitchell in­struct­ed cor­po­ra­tions not to is­sue new con­tracts for “Per­son­nel Em­ploy­ment,” con­sis­tent with an an­nounce­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing.

The min­istry did not ad­dress the hir­ing freeze in its re­sponse but said it re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing jobs and con­tin­u­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices “de­spite the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges left by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

The fi­nan­cial year clos­es on Sep­tem­ber 30.