Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion has re­ceived a cheque val­ued at just over $2 mil­lion to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ment of June 2026 salaries for its month­ly paid em­ploy­ees.

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne shared an im­age of the cheque on so­cial me­dia, an­nounc­ing that “good sense and truth have fi­nal­ly pre­vailed” af­ter the Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived the fund­ing from the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

The may­or said the City Trea­sur­er’s De­part­ment is pro­cess­ing the salary pay­ments for the cor­po­ra­tion’s civ­il ser­vants. Al­leyne thanked em­ploy­ees for their pa­tience dur­ing the salary de­lay but warned that the cor­po­ra­tion’s fi­nan­cial chal­lenges re­main.

“The city still has no al­lo­ca­tion for salary pay­ments for Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber 2026,” the may­or said, adding that the cor­po­ra­tion will con­tin­ue en­gag­ing the min­istry to ad­dress what he de­scribed as a “fis­cal fi­as­co in lo­cal gov­ern­ment.”

He al­so said dis­cus­sions would con­tin­ue with the min­istry re­gard­ing the wage rate in­crease and out­stand­ing back­pay owed to dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers.

Mean­while, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas ad­dressed the mat­ter on so­cial me­dia, stat­ing that the union had been en­gag­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­solve the de­lay in June salary pay­ments.

Thomas said the PSA had been in­formed that “the cheque was col­lect­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion to­day,” con­tra­dict­ing the word­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum is­sued to civ­il ser­vants on Ju­ly 1, 2026, which stat­ed that the au­thor­i­ties were “await­ing the com­ple­tion of all nec­es­sary process­es.”