KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The swear­ings-in of coun­cil­lors for the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion card­ed for to­day has been post­poned.

Per­son­nel from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment said that some of the coun­cil­lors-elect in­di­cat­ed that they could not make it to to­day’s cer­e­mo­ny at the San Fer­nan­do City Hall. For­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said it was can­celled un­til fur­ther no­tice, but sources said Mon­day has been giv­en as a ten­ta­tive date.

Coun­cil­lors-elect told Guardian Me­dia that the cer­e­mo­ny was an­nounced with lit­tle no­tice, leav­ing them with no time to pre­pare them­selves and their fam­i­lies.

Some coun­cil­lors-elect need­ed to ap­ply for time off from work as well.

To­day’s cer­e­mo­ny would have seen six Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment(PNM) and three Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lors tak­ing their oath of of­fice fol­low­ing last Mon­day’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

In 2016, the PNM made a clean sweep at the polls in San Fer­nan­do.

How­ev­er, the coun­cil’s term end­ed in con­tro­ver­sy af­ter a Guardian Me­dia ex­pose re­vealed that Re­grel­lo lied about his son’s em­ploy­ment at the Cor­po­ra­tion.

In Mon­day’s elec­tion, the PNM lost three elec­toral dis­tricts to the UNC.

The clo­sure of Petrotrin was al­so at­trib­uted to the loss of the Mara­bel­la East elec­toral dis­trict.

The swear­ings-in of coun­cil­lors at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion was al­so can­celled un­til fur­ther no­tice, due to to­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment.

The PNM made a sweep at the polls in Port-of-Spain.