Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin has de­fend­ed the cor­po­ra­tion’s re­cent spend­ing on In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, back-to-school dri­ves, and oth­er so­cial sup­port pro­grammes, stress­ing that most of the fund­ing came from pri­vate spon­sor­ship and in­ter­nal­ly raised rev­enue rather than cen­tral gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tions. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Austin said about three-quar­ters of the costs were cov­ered by spon­sor­ship, with the bal­ance com­ing from the cor­po­ra­tion’s own rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Every cor­po­ra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for rais­ing its own rev­enue, and we raised a lot this year,” Austin ex­plained.

“The bulk of what we raise goes back in­to the com­mu­ni­ty—back-to-school sup­port, food as­sis­tance, and help­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble.”

He not­ed that coun­cil­lors from both the PNM and UNC ben­e­fit­ted equal­ly.

“We gave the largest num­ber of back-to-school vouch­ers and sup­port that any cor­po­ra­tion has giv­en its mem­bers of coun­cil. Each coun­cil­lor was sup­port­ed with both fi­nan­cial and oth­er re­sources to serve their dis­tricts,” he said.

Austin al­so ad­dressed the silent fire­works dis­play at this year’s In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions in the East-West Cor­ri­dor, con­firm­ing that it came at no cost to tax­pay­ers.

“That was spon­sored by the pri­vate sec­tor,” he said. “In terms of cost, it was about the same as pre­vi­ous years, but the event it­self was short­er.”

With the fis­cal year clos­ing on Sep­tem­ber 30, Austin said all re­main­ing rev­enue will be chan­nelled in­to so­cial pro­grammes, par­tic­u­lar­ly food se­cu­ri­ty and ed­u­ca­tion sup­port.

“Our pri­or­i­ty is en­sur­ing that fam­i­lies and chil­dren have the sup­port they need,” he said.

The back­drop to these mu­nic­i­pal ac­tiv­i­ties was Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that the tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade and state fire­works were can­celled due to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency. She said the move would save tax­pay­ers an es­ti­mat­ed $2.6 mil­lion and redi­rect re­sources to more ur­gent na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties.

While Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co leaned heav­i­ly on spon­sor­ship, the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, led by May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, host­ed scaled-down In­de­pen­dence ac­tiv­i­ties un­der the ban­ner For the Love of Lib­er­ty.

The pro­gramme at Nel­son Man­dela Park fea­tured a fam­i­ly fun day with boun­cy cas­tles, face-paint­ing, pop­corn and snow cones, fol­lowed by cul­tur­al per­for­mances. Lat­er, Pan on the Av­enue brought live steel­pan per­for­mances to Wood­brook in part­ner­ship with Pan Trin­ba­go and lo­cal busi­ness spon­sors.

May­or Al­leyne has al­so been em­pha­sis­ing com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tred spend­ing, with fis­cal 2025 al­lo­ca­tions for her­itage restora­tion projects at Wood­ford Square and on­go­ing road in­fra­struc­ture up­grades—mea­sures he said bal­ance cel­e­bra­tion with fis­cal pru­dence.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen for com­ment on re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions’ spend­ing, but no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time. Ef­forts to con­firm whether UNC-led cor­po­ra­tions un­der­took In­de­pen­dence Day ac­tiv­i­ties al­so yield­ed no replies.