Who is telling the truth about the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s in­abil­i­ty to pay salaries on time?

May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has ar­gued that the cor­po­ra­tion has been un­fair­ly treat­ed in the al­lo­ca­tion and re­lease of funds need­ed to man­age the cap­i­tal city. Most re­cent­ly, he said the cor­po­ra­tion was on­ly in­formed on Tues­day that funds had been trans­ferred to fa­cil­i­tate June salary pay­ments, just one day be­fore the month-end.

May­or Al­leyne’s ac­count di­rect­ly con­tra­dicts that of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, who main­tains that the de­lay re­sult­ed from the cor­po­ra­tion’s fail­ure to sub­mit the doc­u­men­ta­tion re­quired for the mid-year bud­get re­view process in a time­ly man­ner.

May­or Al­leyne, how­ev­er, has been spe­cif­ic in his re­sponse. He stat­ed that the re­quired doc­u­ments were sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment on April 7, a re­vised bud­get was sent on April 16, and the mat­ter was for­ward­ed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance on June 18. If those dates are cor­rect, then ques­tions must be asked about where re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the de­lay tru­ly lies.

The pub­lic de­serves a clear an­swer.

While the June al­lo­ca­tions have since been dis­bursed by the Gov­ern­ment, we ac­knowl­edge that al­le­ga­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion against lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions by cen­tral gov­ern­ment are noth­ing new. Suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have faced ac­cu­sa­tions from op­po­si­tion-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions of in­ad­e­quate fund­ing and de­layed dis­burse­ments. Both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties have made such com­plaints when sit­ting on the op­po­si­tion bench­es.

What makes these dis­putes par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling is that work­ers have be­come the ca­su­al­ties of a po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive dis­agree­ment.

In the lat­est in­ci­dent, May­or Al­leyne had pub­licly de­tailed his cor­po­ra­tion’s sub­mis­sions, while Min­is­ter Ameen re­mained equal­ly adamant that the cor­po­ra­tion failed to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary for funds to be re­leased on time. These are com­pet­ing claims that can­not sim­ply be left to par­ti­san de­bate. An in­de­pen­dent re­view should de­ter­mine whether the de­lay re­sult­ed from ad­min­is­tra­tive short­com­ings at the cor­po­ra­tion, in­ef­fi­cien­cies with­in the min­istry, or fail­ures else­where in the ap­proval process.

Pol­i­tics will al­ways in­volve con­flict and blame. But work­ers and their fam­i­lies should nev­er have to bear the con­se­quences of bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays or po­lit­i­cal point-scor­ing. Salaries are earned in­come and pub­lic ser­vants should not be left un­cer­tain about whether they will be paid on time.

The con­tro­ver­sy al­so ex­pos­es a deep­er prob­lem—the con­tin­ued de­pen­dence of lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies on cen­tral gov­ern­ment fund­ing. Pro­posed re­forms that would have al­lowed cor­po­ra­tions to col­lect and re­tain greater rev­enue through prop­er­ty tax­a­tion were nev­er ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed, leav­ing lo­cal au­thor­i­ties de­pen­dent on pe­ri­od­ic al­lo­ca­tions from the Trea­sury.

With the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion re­ject­ing that ap­proach, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty now rests with Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a trans­par­ent, ef­fi­cient and eq­ui­table fund­ing sys­tem that en­sures cor­po­ra­tions can meet their oblig­a­tions with­out dis­rup­tion.

At the same time, city and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions must up­hold the high­est stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, this is­sue is about far more than de­layed salaries. It high­lights the ur­gent need to mod­ernise lo­cal gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­duce po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and cre­ate sys­tems that put the in­ter­ests of work­ers and cit­i­zens ahead of par­ti­san ad­van­tage. Un­til that trans­for­ma­tion oc­curs, sim­i­lar dis­putes will con­tin­ue to un­der­mine con­fi­dence in lo­cal gov­ern­ment and those en­trust­ed with its man­age­ment.