Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Two Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) may­ors are push­ing back at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­ter she ac­cused Op­po­si­tion-con­trolled mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions of “mak­ing fools of them­selves” by com­plain­ing about bud­get cuts, de­spite re­ceiv­ing $490 mil­lion more than their Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­ter­parts.

Diego Mar­tin May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er and Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said the Prime Min­is­ter was mis­lead­ing the pub­lic by fo­cus­ing on re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, which cov­ers salaries, wages and op­er­at­ing costs, while over­look­ing sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for roads, drains and com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

Their re­spons­es fol­low a state­ment by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said: “In­stead of mak­ing fools of them­selves, the PNM should tell their con­stituents that the sev­en PNM cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived $490 mil­lion more than the sev­en UNC cor­po­ra­tions.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said the sev­en PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions were al­lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.29 bil­lion for fis­cal 2027, com­pared with $799 mil­lion for UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions.

She said PNM cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al $276 mil­lion over the pre­vi­ous year’s re­vised es­ti­mates, com­pared with $183 mil­lion for UNC cor­po­ra­tions.

But the may­ors said those fig­ures did not ad­dress the cuts they were protest­ing.

Diego Mar­tin may­or chal­lenges Kam­la

Glas­gow-Warn­er called on the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­duce a de­tailed com­par­i­son of de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tions for the past three fi­nan­cial years.

“I chal­lenge the Prime Min­is­ter to show the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go where PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived in­creas­es in their al­lo­ca­tions for road works,” she said.

She al­so called for fig­ures on drainage, ir­ri­ga­tion, recre­ation­al grounds, mar­kets, bridges, cul­verts and re­tain­ing walls.

“Put the 2025, 2026 and 2027 De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme al­lo­ca­tions side by side, cor­po­ra­tion by cor­po­ra­tion, line item by line item.”

Glas­gow-Warn­er ar­gued that re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture must ac­count for dif­fer­ences in work­force size and op­er­a­tional re­spon­si­bil­i­ties among cor­po­ra­tions.

She point­ed to Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co, which serves more than 200,000 res­i­dents, and not­ed that mu­nic­i­pal po­lice wages in Port of Spain and San Fer­nan­do are fund­ed through their cor­po­ra­tions, un­like in some oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

“You can­not sim­ply present those larg­er fig­ures as though they rep­re­sent ad­di­tion­al mon­ey be­ing spent on de­vel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” she said.

The Diego Mar­tin may­or warned that cuts to de­vel­op­ment fund­ing could leave roads un­re­paired, drains un­con­struct­ed and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties in dis­re­pair.

“Pay­ing salaries keeps a cor­po­ra­tion op­er­at­ing. De­vel­op­ment fund­ing helps it de­liv­er the in­fra­struc­ture that com­mu­ni­ties need.”

‘Back­pay does not build roads’

Al­leyne was al­so crit­i­cal, ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of at­tempt­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic by high­light­ing in­creas­es in re­cur­rent spend­ing.

“There’s one big prob­lem with the Prime Min­is­ter’s fo­cus: Back­pay Does Not Build Roads,” he said.

He said re­cur­rent al­lo­ca­tions had in­creased be­cause of salary ad­just­ments and back­pay for pub­lic ser­vants, high­er wages and back­pay for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, and in­creased Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions.

None of those ex­pens­es, he ar­gued, rep­re­sent­ed ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture.

“None of these in­creas­es mean bet­ter roads or bet­ter drains; with­out a De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme bud­get, it means more pot­holes and more flood­ing,” Al­leyne said.

De­vel­op­ment fund­ing cut

The dis­agree­ment comes amid sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions in de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tions for PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions.

Bud­get com­par­isons show de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for the sev­en PNM cor­po­ra­tions falling by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $49.55 mil­lion, or 61 per cent, com­pared with the orig­i­nal 2026 es­ti­mates.

By com­par­i­son, de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for the sev­en UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions de­clined by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.06 mil­lion, or 1.6 per cent.

Diego Mar­tin’s de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tion fell from $11.1 mil­lion to $2.22 mil­lion, while Port-of-Spain’s de­clined from $4.1 mil­lion to $2.6 mil­lion.

These fig­ures con­trast with the in­creas­es in re­cur­rent al­lo­ca­tions cit­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, al­though the com­par­isons use dif­fer­ent ex­pen­di­ture cat­e­gories and 2026 base­lines.

Glas­gow-Warn­er main­tained that the cen­tral is­sue was whether cor­po­ra­tions had enough re­sources to un­der­take projects that di­rect­ly ben­e­fit res­i­dents.

“This is not about PNM or UNC. This is about the peo­ple we were elect­ed to serve!”