Guardian Me­dia

In­ves­ti­ga­tion Desk

The hir­ing of con­tract work­ers at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the may­or’s of­fice, has raised con­cerns among mem­bers of the cor­po­ra­tion.

Guardian Me­dia was told that in ad­di­tion to his sec­re­tary and per­son­al as­sis­tant, May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has six ad­di­tion­al mem­bers of staff—among them a chief of staff and city ex­pe­ri­ence as­sis­tant—which has in­creased the cost to run the may­oral of­fice by $57,500 a month.

The roles and salaries for the may­or’s of­fice are chief of staff—$16,000, city ex­pe­ri­ence as­sis­tant—$7,500, project im­ple­men­ta­tion of­fi­cer—$10,000, dri­ver—$7,000, me­dia of­fi­cer—$7,000, and events co-or­di­na­tor—$10,000. The cost of con­tract work­ers at the cor­po­ra­tion in­creased from $147,860 in 2022 to $1.9 mil­lion in 2023 (see box for com­pa­ra­ble fig­ures).

As a re­sult of con­cerns raised, the con­tracts of the six em­ployed at the may­or’s of­fice have been re­duced from six months to three months. Al­leyne, who was sworn in as may­or in Au­gust 2023, got ap­proval from his PNM-con­trolled coun­cil (there are 12 coun­cil­lors in the cor­po­ra­tion) to hire the work­ers.

The cur­rent sys­tem pro­vides each may­or and chair­man with a sec­re­tary, who re­ceives a month­ly salary of $5,600, and a per­son­al as­sis­tant, who earns $7,400 per month. The con­tracts for the chief of staff, dri­ver, me­dia of­fi­cer, and city ex­pe­ri­ence as­sis­tant were valid from Feb­ru­ary 3 to May 2, 2025. The events co-or­di­na­tor con­tract was valid from March 3 to June 2, 2025, while the project im­ple­men­ta­tion of­fi­cer was valid from Feb­ru­ary 19 to May 18, 2025.

A doc­u­ment ti­tled “Con­tract Of­fi­cers up­dat­ed as of 15-07-24” showed there were five short-term con­tract work­ers in the may­or’s of­fice. Two po­si­tions—chief of staff and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of­fi­cer—were brought in on Oc­to­ber 16, 2023.

The fol­low­ing month, a project im­ple­men­ta­tion of­fi­cer was hired on con­tract. On Feb­ru­ary 2, 2024, the spe­cial events co-or­di­na­tor took up du­ties. A lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer was the fifth, who start­ed work on May 3, 2022. Most of their con­tracts were for six months “with a pro­posed new con­tract pe­ri­od to ap­prove” be­tween three to six months. Last year, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of­fi­cer, who re­ceived a $7,000 month­ly pay pack­et, left the cor­po­ra­tion.

On Fri­day, may­ors in Ch­agua­nas, Siparia, Ari­ma and Point Fortin con­firmed that they have on­ly two or three staff mem­bers work­ing in their of­fices com­pared to Al­leyne’s staff. Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed said there were on­ly two work­ers in his of­fice—a sec­re­tary and a per­son­al as­sis­tant. Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj has one per­son—a per­son­al sec­re­tary; Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo has two—a sec­re­tary and per­son­al as­sis­tant, while Point Fortin May­or Clyde James has a dri­ver, per­son­al as­sis­tant, and sec­re­tary.

There are sev­en bor­oughs in the 14 cor­po­ra­tions. The hir­ing of the six comes on the heels of a three-page memo is­sued on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2025, to the CEOs of cor­po­ra­tions by the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Pe­ter Mitchell, ad­vis­ing that short-term en­gage­ments should be em­ployed on­ly to re­cruit work­ers in rel­e­vant spe­cial­i­sa­tions that are in­creas­ing­ly rel­e­vant to the cor­po­ra­tion for the ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion of its op­er­a­tions in the ab­sence of and/or non-fill­ing of po­si­tions on the per­ma­nent es­tab­lish­ment.

The memo, head­lined “Short-term con­tract em­ploy­ment at the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions” and ob­tained by the In­ves­ti­ga­tion Desk, made it abun­dant­ly clear that “un­der no cir­cum­stances should the mem­bers of coun­cil sub­mit names for em­ploy­ment since this is not un­der the re­mit of the coun­cil” and “all short-term con­tract em­ploy­ment should be un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment of the CEO sole­ly.”

It fur­ther stat­ed that the CEO is ob­lig­at­ed to en­sure that nepo­tism in the work­place is pro­hib­it­ed by im­par­tial­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ing and op­er­a­tional­is­ing the coun­cil’s res­o­lu­tions.

The process

A cor­po­ra­tion source ex­plained that for some­one to be hired on a short-term con­tract at any cor­po­ra­tion, there must be a need for the po­si­tion. The may­or/chair­man would first have to talk to the CEO—the chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer—about the po­si­tions need­ed to be filled. A list of the po­si­tions re­quired would have to be pro­vid­ed to the CEO, who would then re­fer the mat­ter to HR. The fi­nance de­part­ment would al­so have to get in­volved to de­ter­mine if mon­ey is avail­able to pay the con­tract­ed work­ers. If mon­ey is avail­able, the HR de­part­ment will de­ter­mine the salaries and terms and con­di­tions for the jobs of­fered. The po­si­tions would then be ad­ver­tised in­ter­nal­ly or ex­ter­nal­ly, and in­ter­views would be con­duct­ed there­after by HR to se­lect the best ap­pli­cants.

A few months ago, a source said one of the con­tract­ed work­ers went abroad for med­ical at­ten­tion and sub­mit­ted an in­voice for pay­ment. “The CEO was made aware of it, and we had to re­turn the in­voice for cor­rec­tion.” The CEO at that time was An­nette Sta­ple­ton-Seaforth. An­oth­er source said a log­book had to be im­ple­ment­ed for the con­tract work­ers’ at­ten­dance and punc­tu­al­i­ty. “We don’t have any con­trol over them. What we tried to do is make sure they sign the book. They don’t an­swer to us.”

Last April, Sta­ple­ton-Seaforth was sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of a vi­o­la­tion of pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions sur­round­ing the pur­chase of truck parts for the cor­po­ra­tion in No­vem­ber 2023. The CEO was sus­pend­ed with act­ing garage su­per­vi­sor/trans­port fore­man II Dale Agar­rat, pend­ing the out­come of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. Sta­ple­ton-Seaforth was re­placed by act­ing CEO Vic­to­ria Al­lum. On Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, Al­lum was trans­ferred out of Port-of-Spain to the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

An­tho­ny O’Brien is now the cor­po­ra­tion’s act­ing CEO. In a let­ter from the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 10, 2025, Sta­ple­ton-Seaforth, who is now re­tired, was in­formed that the dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal ap­point­ed to hear the ev­i­dence had de­ter­mined that the charges pre­ferred against her were not proven on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties.

Con­tact­ed on Thurs­day, Sta­ple­ton-Seaforth re­fused to com­ment. Al­lum could not be reached for a re­sponse.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get Al­leyne or Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to com­ment. Guardian Me­dia reached out to Al­leyne via What­sApp mes­sages on four oc­ca­sions be­tween Fri­day and Sat­ur­day morn­ing but got no re­sponse. Al-Rawi did not re­spond to a What­sApp mes­sage sent to him on Fri­day.

For­mer may­ors weigh in

For­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing said dur­ing his tenure from 2010 to 2013 he nev­er hired any­one for his of­fice.

“I could have em­ployed two of­fi­cers but nev­er brought those peo­ple on board.”

Lee Sing said he did not be­lieve in hir­ing peo­ple for “win­dow dress­ing.”

Un­der his con­trol, he en­sured that the cor­po­ra­tion’s dai­ly and month­ly paid work­ers de­liv­ered on the job so there was no need to bring in ad­di­tion­al bod­ies.

“In the cur­rent sce­nario, peo­ple are prob­a­bly de­mand­ed to do dif­fer­ent job func­tions.”

Lee Sing said he al­ways looked at costs and the re­turns on in­vest­ments.

How­ev­er, he said some of the cur­rent po­si­tions at the cor­po­ra­tion baf­fled him.

“Are those po­si­tions nec­es­sary? And if they are, I think the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the coun­cil is to jus­ti­fy the ex­pen­di­ture be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly the mon­ey comes out of the peo­ple’s (tax­pay­ers’) pock­ets.

“The hir­ing is one thing ... the source of fund­ing to pay the salaries is an­oth­er. Do you have bud­get al­lo­ca­tions for it? And if so, is this sanc­tioned by the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment?”

For­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Keron Valen­tine said he could have brought in a per­son­al as­sis­tant but opt­ed not to.

Valen­tine was deputy may­or for six years and served as may­or for one year in 2016.

“My on­ly con­cern is that the cli­mate, based on our cur­rent lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem, I think it is an over­load,” he said, re­fer­ring to the peo­ple re­cruit­ed at the cor­po­ra­tion.

He said no cor­po­ra­tion should be top-heavy or have over­lap­ping roles be­cause it would send the wrong sig­nals.

Valen­tine felt hir­ing a chief of staff, project im­ple­men­ta­tion of­fi­cer and events co­or­di­na­tor was an “overkill”.

He said his per­son­al as­sis­tant worked with all de­part­ments to stage events.

He said burgess­es in the city should have seen more de­liv­er­ables with the re­ten­tion of these jobs which has not been hap­pen­ing.

Joel Mar­tinez, Al­leyne’s pre­de­ces­sor said he hired a per­son­al as­sis­tant who al­so per­formed the du­ties of a re­la­tions of­fi­cer.

When the per­son­al as­sis­tant left, Mar­tinez said he hired two women to re­place her.

“Then I had my dri­ver. That was it.” Mar­tinez was may­or from 2016 to 2023.

He said with lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form more staff would be re­quired to al­low may­ors/chair­men to make prop­er de­ci­sions.

“I don’t think he (Al­leyne) has gone on a hir­ing ram­page. It was nec­es­sary.”

Al­lo­ca­tion

In 2023, the Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived $239.3 mil­lion in Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion. Oth­er in­come in­clud­ed $8 mil­lion.

From a per­son­al ex­pen­di­ture of $192.3 mil­lion, the cor­po­ra­tion spent $43.1 mil­lion on salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowance, and $117. 3 mil­lion on wages and cost of liv­ing al­lowance.

The cor­po­ra­tion in 2022 re­ceived $217.9 mil­lion in sub­ven­tion. Oth­er in­come in­clud­ed $7.8 mil­lion.

From a per­son­al ex­pen­di­ture of $153.2 mil­lion, the cor­po­ra­tion dis­persed $42.6 mil­lion on salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowance and $81.6 mil­lion on wages and cost of liv­ing al­lowance.

The cost of con­tract em­ploy­ment at cor­po­ra­tions tak­en from the 2023 and 2024 rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture of draft es­ti­mates of statu­to­ry boards.

Ac­tu­al 2022 Ac­tu­al 2023

Port-of-Spain $147,860 $1,916,067

San Fer­nan­do $183,061 $168,120

Ari­ma $111,600 $686,035

Point Fortin $298,411 $112,652

Ch­agua­nas $156,000 $155,581

Diego Mar­tin $133,800 $156,000

san Juan/Laven­tille $156,000 $156,000

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co $168,003 $169,843

San­gre Grande $156,000 $354,128

Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro $155,959 $160,094

Ma­yaro $156,000 $142,855

Siparia $168,854 $154,144

Pe­nal/Debe $168,854 $159,716

Princes Town $156,000 $140,103