Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne says the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has fi­nal­ly ap­proved the trans­fer of funds need­ed to cov­er June salaries for City Cor­po­ra­tion em­ploy­ees, but warned that work­ers re­main un­paid un­til the Min­istry of Fi­nance com­pletes the trans­fer process.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at City Hall, Al­leyne said the ap­proval came on­ly hours be­fore he faced the me­dia, af­ter what he de­scribed as months of re­peat­ed warn­ings that the cor­po­ra­tion was run­ning out of mon­ey to pay salaries.

“On­ly about an hour ago, the city re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ing that they have ap­proved our sub­mis­sion re­quest­ing that funds be trans­ferred in­to our bud­get, but it doesn’t stop there.

“The Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment can­not trans­fer its own funds; on­ly the Min­istry of Fi­nance can do that,” he com­plained.

He stressed that the ap­proval ap­plies on­ly to June, with no con­firmed al­lo­ca­tions yet for Ju­ly, Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber.

Al­leyne re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the cor­po­ra­tion act­ed too late, pro­duc­ing cor­re­spon­dence and of­fi­cial meet­ing min­utes to out­line what he de­scribed as a clear time­line of re­peat­ed ap­peals to Gov­ern­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the May­or:

March 6: City Coun­cil ap­proved its mid-year re­view es­ti­mates

March 10: Es­ti­mates sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment

April 7: CEO wrote the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary warn­ing of a $13 mil­lion salary short­fall and a $2.7 mil­lion NIS short­fall

April 8: Al­leyne raised the is­sue pub­licly dur­ing a Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment meet­ing at­tend­ed by the min­is­ter, per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions

April 13: Re­vised es­ti­mates re­sub­mit­ted

April 16: Sub­mis­sion sent di­rect­ly to the Min­istry of Fi­nance

June 18: An­oth­er let­ter warned the cor­po­ra­tion would be un­able to meet June pay­roll

June 30: Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ap­proved the trans­fer re­quest.

“We have spared no ef­fort to raise this is­sue. We made our orig­i­nal sub­mis­sions on March 10. We wrote on April 7. We stood up and spoke on the record on April 8. We wrote again on June 18, and we still have not re­ceived the ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion that we re­quire,” the May­or not­ed.

He said work­ers should not be forced to suf­fer be­cause of de­lays in the fund­ing process.

He re­count­ed speak­ing with one em­ploy­ee who has worked at City Hall for 19 years and said it was the first time salaries had ever been de­layed, not­ing that “even dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, pay came on time.”

“We are call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and we are beg­ging the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to in­ter­vene so that our work­ers can be paid,” Al­leyne said.

Al­leyne ar­gued the cur­rent cri­sis be­gan af­ter mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions were in­struct­ed in De­cem­ber 2025 to pay ad­vances on pub­lic ser­vants’ back­pay with­out re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al fund­ing.

“The orig­i­nal sin com­mit­ted here is when the back­pay was paid in De­cem­ber with­out any al­lo­ca­tion be­ing made to pay the back­pay.”

He said sub­se­quent salary in­creas­es and high­er NIS con­tri­bu­tion rates im­ple­ment­ed in Jan­u­ary were al­so not re­flect­ed in the orig­i­nal bud­get al­lo­ca­tions.

Asked about state­ments from the Min­is­ter sug­gest­ing the cor­po­ra­tion had failed to sub­mit the re­quired in­for­ma­tion, Al­leyne strong­ly dis­agreed.

“That state­ment is un­true. I have just shown you all of the doc­u­ments. We have done all that we could rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed to do to en­sure that the pow­ers that be were aware of our dire sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

While wel­com­ing the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proval of the trans­fer re­quest, Al­leyne warned that City Hall’s fi­nan­cial un­cer­tain­ty is far from over.

“We will see this par­tic­u­lar process through and en­sure that we pay our civ­il ser­vants, and then we will en­gage with the min­istry again to make sure that we re­ceive the al­lo­ca­tion we need for Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber.”

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen said the de­lay was not caused by her min­istry or the Min­istry of Fi­nance but stemmed from the cor­po­ra­tion’s fail­ure to sub­mit re­quired doc­u­ments dur­ing the mid-year bud­get re­view process.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “a sim­ple case of neg­li­gence,” she said the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and staff worked over­time through­out the week­end to re­solve the is­sue and min­imise the im­pact on em­ploy­ees.

“I am very con­cerned that this neg­li­gence is af­fect­ing the work­ers, and this re­al­ly has noth­ing to do with them,” Ameen said, not­ing that she has al­so been in con­tact with the rel­e­vant union re­gard­ing the mat­ter.