Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris is warn­ing of pos­si­ble job cuts, af­ter his cor­po­ra­tion, along with the six oth­er Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-con­trolled re­gion­al bod­ies, re­ceived re­duced al­lo­ca­tions in their re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for the new fi­nan­cial year.

Mean­while, the sev­en Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC-) con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions all re­ceived in­creas­es in their re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

And while the PNM’s Symon de No­bri­ga be­lieves it is a clear case of ge­o­graph­ic and po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­ja Ameen claimed for too long, the sys­tem used to al­lo­cate bud­get funds to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions was un­fair and out­dat­ed.

“We will work to­geth­er,” Ameen said when pressed on the al­lo­ca­tion trend yes­ter­day.

Par­ris saw a $4.4 mil­lion cut from fis­cal 2025. He lament­ed yes­ter­day that the peo­ple in the south­ern city did not “win” fol­low­ing Mon­day’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

He said while he plans to meet with the city’s trea­sur­er and CEO to ex­plore cre­ative ways to man­age the re­duced al­lo­ca­tion, he fears job cuts may ul­ti­mate­ly be­come an un­avoid­able op­tion.

“Cer­tain­ly, it would mean a cut in some of projects, cer­tain­ly it may mean a cut in the work­force,” he said. He ex­plained that the SFCC has unique hir­ing habits.

“We’re talk­ing about the ca­su­al labour force. You have to un­der­stand how cor­po­ra­tions are run and how San Fer­nan­do is run. I am the on­ly may­or in the coun­try that al­lows coun­cil­lors, both PNM and UNC, to be able to hire peo­ple from their com­mu­ni­ty. So, the PNM and the UNC both get sev­en work­ers from their com­mu­ni­ty that they can hire every month. Then there are those per­sons who would come to the cor­po­ra­tion, sign their name to the ad­min­is­tra­tive list and they would get work.”

Par­ris added, “And for some months now, we’ve been told by the min­istry that we need to look at our ex­pen­di­ture in terms of the work­force. So again, I an­tic­i­pate there are go­ing to be cuts with­in our over­all op­er­a­tions and we’re go­ing to have to look at our wages and salaries as one of those ar­eas that we have to make some cuts.”

Par­ris said all re­gion­al heads were in­struct­ed by Min­is­ter Ameen not to spend the monies col­lect­ed from Prop­er­ty Tax. He es­ti­mat­ed that his city col­lect­ed al­most $9 mil­lion from its burgess­es.

How­ev­er, Ameen promised to work with the PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions to en­sure their needs are met. She told Guardian Me­dia the al­lo­ca­tions had noth­ing to do with po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion but rather a be­lief that the cur­rent sys­tem used to al­lo­cate bud­get funds to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions is un­fair and out­dat­ed. To fix this, Ameen is propos­ing to Cab­i­net that a com­mit­tee be set up to re­view mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries and up­date the vest­ing or­ders (which out­line each cor­po­ra­tion’s as­sets and in­fra­struc­ture needs).

“I am not sat­is­fied that the sys­tem tra­di­tion­al­ly used to al­lo­cate funds has been fair. That is why I have pro­posed to Cab­i­net to have a com­mit­tee to re­view the bound­aries. I am cur­rent­ly hav­ing the vest­ing or­ders up­dat­ed and these should help us to il­lus­trate the true re­quire­ments of each cor­po­ra­tion, in­clud­ing man­pow­er re­quire­ments in or­der to un­der­take mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment. In the mean­time, how­ev­er, I will work with every cor­po­ra­tion with the al­lo­ca­tions giv­en while we fix it.”

Ameen said the cur­rent vest­ing or­ders are based on da­ta that is 20 or 30 years old.

“Af­ter we up­date the vest­ing or­der, the bound­ary re­vi­sion will fol­low to more even­ly dis­trib­ute mu­nic­i­pal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. One cor­po­ra­tion that has 17,000 peo­ple get­ting more than a cor­po­ra­tion with 200,000 peo­ple. That can’t be right. Some coun­cilors have 3,000 peo­ple in their dis­trict, some have 13,000 and get­ting the same pay, same and some­times less re­sources. We have to fix that.”

Guardian Me­dia asked why on­ly PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived a cut in fund­ing if the en­tire sys­tem is al­leged­ly out­dat­ed.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter would on­ly say, “We will work to­geth­er.”

Mean­while, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP de No­bri­ga told Guardian Me­dia the truth is in the num­bers and not the min­is­ter’s words. He said it’s a con­tin­ued pat­tern of ret­ri­bu­tion against peo­ple as­so­ci­at­ed with the PNM. De No­bri­ga, who is a for­mer chair­man of the then Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said the bor­ough has been left with lit­tle to no mon­ey to see about its in­fra­struc­tur­al needs.

“When you send to a re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion $500,000 to deal with lo­cal roads, what is that? And that $500,000 now has to be dis­trib­uted across 10 dis­tricts. So that $500,000 is ac­tu­al­ly $50,000 to deal with roads in any dis­trict. It will not even get a road done in any sin­gle dis­trict. “

The PNM MP said while he would not want to make a pro­nounce­ment that more jobs would be cut, he finds it dif­fi­cult to see any oth­er op­tion. But Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed, who saw his UNC-con­trolled bor­ough get a $14 mil­lion bump in its re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, said he ful­ly agrees with Ameen’s ra­tio­nale.

“You should check the pop­u­la­tion size as well as ge­o­graph­i­cal size, elec­torate size and see how the al­lo­ca­tion is to­wards them. It’s not that Ch­agua­nas wants more than Diego Mar­tin, but I think there’s a big dif­fer­ence be­tween equal­i­ty and eq­ui­ty.”

He said his bor­ough de­serves its in­crease, as it is the fastest-grow­ing mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty in the coun­try.