KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has crit­i­cised the per­for­mance of the coun­try’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem, say­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery is poor and cit­i­zens are not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey.

She says the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed ex­pan­sion from 14 to 17 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions will help ad­dress those short­com­ings, with more staff, a more eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of fi­nan­cial re­sources and stronger su­per­vi­sion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment work­ers.

Re­veal­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to bring the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026 to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said, “Every­one knows that lo­cal gov­ern­ment has been un­der-per­form­ing for years. Ser­vice de­liv­ery is poor and cit­i­zens are not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey. By in­creas­ing the num­ber of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions from 14 to 17, we will im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of ser­vice de­liv­ery to cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing build­ing in­spec­tions, de­vel­op­ment ap­provals, the clean­ing of wa­ter­cours­es and built in­fra­struc­ture, in­sect con­trol and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices. There will be more staff to serve cit­i­zens, fi­nan­cial re­sources will be dis­trib­uted more eq­ui­tably, and su­per­vi­so­ry over­sight of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment work­ers will be strength­ened.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so took aim at the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of lo­cal gov­ern­ment work­ers, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zens are frus­trat­ed.

“We have 13,000 peo­ple em­ployed in lo­cal gov­ern­ment, but af­ter 10 am we can hard­ly see any­one work­ing out­side. Cit­i­zens are fed up with it and the Gov­ern­ment is fed up with it. This has to change.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing is al­so in­tend­ed to ad­dress dis­par­i­ties that have de­vel­oped among mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties as pop­u­la­tions and com­mu­ni­ties have changed.

“For decades, there has been no mean­ing­ful change to our mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries, even as com­mu­ni­ties have grown, pop­u­la­tions have shift­ed and de­vel­op­ment has trans­formed many parts of our coun­try. The re­sult is a sys­tem with sig­nif­i­cant dis­par­i­ties, where some mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties serve much larg­er and grow­ing pop­u­la­tions while op­er­at­ing with­in bound­aries es­tab­lished decades ago. This bill seeks to ad­dress these in­equal­i­ties by cre­at­ing new mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, ad­just­ing bound­aries and en­sur­ing that lo­cal gov­ern­ment bet­ter re­flects the com­mu­ni­ties it serves. Every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of where they live, de­serves fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion, ad­e­quate re­sources and ef­fi­cient ser­vices.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so linked the re­struc­tur­ing to plans to de­cen­tralise some gov­ern­ment and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty away from Port-of-Spain.

“By cre­at­ing these new bor­oughs and a new city, we are lay­ing the foun­da­tion to in­crease pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment in these ar­eas. We in­tend to ex­pand these cen­tres and move some Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate-sec­tor ser­vices out of Port-of-Spain and in­to these ar­eas, there­by re­duc­ing the dai­ly traf­fic bur­den in­to the cap­i­tal.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the re­struc­tur­ing is be­ing dri­ven by po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.

“These changes are about peo­ple, not pol­i­tics. Peo­ple have been suf­fer­ing for too long. It is time to make changes. We are build­ing a lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem that works for ALL the peo­ple.”

An­a­lyst backs lo­cal

govt re­struc­tur­ing

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed says pop­u­la­tion shifts and in­creased com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty pro­vide grounds for re­view­ing the ex­ist­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment struc­ture.

Mo­hammed said move­ment be­tween com­mu­ni­ties, ur­ban ex­pan­sion and in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty have changed some ar­eas con­sid­er­ably.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said, “With­in the coun­try, you have peo­ple mov­ing, mi­gra­tion of peo­ple from one area in­to the next. You have peo­ple mov­ing from sub­urbs in­to ur­bans. You have ur­bans ex­pand­ing and that sort of thing. So, yes, it is not an in­valid rea­son­ing be­hind it. Al­so, I would like to think it has a lot to do with the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and the ex­pan­sion of com­merce in dis­tricts as well. We’ve seen that ar­eas have grown as well be­cause of the im­prove­ment or in­creased lev­el of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty with­in dis­tricts.”

But on the po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of the pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing, he said in­creas­ing the num­ber of cor­po­ra­tions does not nec­es­sar­i­ly guar­an­tee the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) an out­right vic­to­ry in a fu­ture lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

“An in­crease in cor­po­ra­tions does not nec­es­sar­i­ly guar­an­tee that the UNC has an out­right win, an all-out win. I gath­er that some cor­po­ra­tions nat­u­ral­ly, ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, de­mo­graph­i­cal­ly as well, is go­ing to be more dif­fi­cult than oth­ers to win. And that would be based on cam­paign and promis­es and rep­re­sen­ta­tion and qual­i­ty of can­di­dates, etc.”

Mo­hammed al­so be­lieves the pro­posed re­struc­tur­ing could have gone fur­ther, ques­tion­ing why Princes Town was not se­lect­ed for bor­ough sta­tus.

He al­so weighed in on pro­vi­sions in the bill deal­ing with coun­cil­lors and al­der­men who leave the po­lit­i­cal par­ties through which they en­tered lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

While sup­port­ing con­se­quences for rep­re­sen­ta­tives who cross the floor, Mo­hammed said ac­count­abil­i­ty should ex­tend be­yond the re­la­tion­ship be­tween rep­re­sen­ta­tives and their po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

He pro­posed in­tro­duc­ing a right of re­call that would give res­i­dents a mech­a­nism to hold coun­cil­lors and al­der­men ac­count­able for their per­for­mance.

Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion could be mea­sured through fac­tors such as of­fice hours and de­liv­er­ables, with a mech­a­nism es­tab­lished for con­stituents to pro­vide feed­back on their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.