Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Port-of-Spain May­or, Chin­ua Al­leyne, said June salaries for cor­po­ra­tion work­ers will de­pend on Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view on June 15.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, Al­leyne con­firmed that the cor­po­ra­tion com­plete­ly ex­haust­ed its avail­able fund­ing for staff salaries at the end of May. The sit­u­a­tion leaves the cap­i­tal city’s work­force in lim­bo as the fis­cal year pro­gress­es.

“The end of the month of May was the last month that we were able to ful­ly meet our oblig­a­tion,” Al­leyne stat­ed. “That is to say that for June, we do not present­ly have enough al­lo­ca­tion to pay all pub­lic ser­vants. And there­fore, we have no al­lo­ca­tion avail­able to pay pub­lic ser­vants for Ju­ly, Au­gust, or Sep­tem­ber.”

The May­or not­ed that the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and the City Trea­sur­er re­cent­ly de­liv­ered a stark re­port out­lin­ing deficits across sev­er­al crit­i­cal fi­nan­cial line items, most no­tably salaries and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA).

To avert what he de­scribed as an “on­go­ing fis­cal fi­as­co,” Al­leyne said the cor­po­ra­tion has turned to the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for an emer­gency in­ter­ven­tion. A for­mal sub­mis­sion has been sent to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­quest­ing ad­di­tion­al fund­ing, timed with the an­nounced bud­get re­view.

Al­leyne con­firmed that mu­nic­i­pal ex­ec­u­tives re­main in reg­u­lar con­tact with Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. “The CEO has been in reg­u­lar con­tact with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary. We’ve made writ­ten sub­mis­sions and we’re await­ing the out­come of those de­lib­er­a­tions,” he said.

Maxi taxi protests

paral­yse city com­merce

Adding to the cap­i­tal’s im­me­di­ate chal­lenges, Al­leyne al­so ad­dressed the se­vere dis­rup­tions caused by re­cent maxi taxi protests be­tween Mon­day and Wednes­day last week. The in­dus­tri­al ac­tion left thou­sands of com­muters strand­ed and di­rect­ly hit the city’s dai­ly op­er­a­tions.

“We had some of our staff mem­bers who were un­able to make it to work,” he said. “Even staff that works di­rect­ly in my of­fice, they were un­able to get trans­porta­tion.”

The fall­out ex­tend­ed far be­yond mu­nic­i­pal staff. For a city that hosts an es­ti­mat­ed 250,000 work­ers and shop­pers dai­ly, Al­leyne said the trans­port strike dealt a swift blow to the lo­cal econ­o­my with “def­i­nite­ly less foot­fall in the city,” which trig­gered an im­me­di­ate neg­a­tive im­pact on com­mer­cial busi­ness­es.