Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

More than $500,000 ear­marked for Tu­na­puna Week cel­e­bra­tions has prompt­ed a boy­cott by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lors and al­der­men, who ac­cuse the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-led Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of ne­glect­ing de­vel­op­ment projects and ba­sic mu­nic­i­pal ser­vices in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

The boy­cott was an­nounced by mi­nor­i­ty leader Prakash Barath, who said UNC rep­re­sen­ta­tives would not par­tic­i­pate in any of the week’s ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Civic Awards cer­e­mo­ny.

The cel­e­bra­tions of­fi­cial­ly be­gan yes­ter­day morn­ing with an in­ter­faith bless­ing at the cor­ner of Cen­te­nary Street and the East­ern Main Road, fol­lowed by a mil­i­tary pa­rade which pro­ceed­ed along the East­ern Main Road to Con­stan­tine Park in Ma­coya.

The fes­tiv­i­ties are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to­day with “Pan & Pow­der in Puna,” a steel­pan street pa­rade or­gan­ised in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pan Trin­ba­go and its East­ern Re­gion.

The event, sched­uled to be­gin at 5 pm, will fea­ture sev­er­al steel or­ches­tras, in­clud­ing Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus, Massy Trinidad All Stars, BP Rene­gades, FCB Su­per­novas, Pam­beri and Bird­song.

How­ev­er, Barath main­tained that the cor­po­ra­tion’s spend­ing pri­or­i­ties were mis­placed.

“The PNM-led coun­cil must ex­plain why it can find more than half a mil­lion dol­lars for fes­tiv­i­ties while es­sen­tial de­vel­op­ment projects and rou­tine main­te­nance re­main un­fund­ed,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Barath, UNC coun­cil­lors have not been al­lo­cat­ed de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme projects with­in their re­spec­tive elec­toral dis­tricts, with the cor­po­ra­tion’s chair­man cit­ing re­duced fund­ing re­leas­es as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

He ar­gued that any re­duc­tion in fund­ing should be dis­trib­uted fair­ly across all elec­toral dis­tricts, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

The mi­nor­i­ty leader claimed that the mon­ey ear­marked for Tu­na­puna Week could fi­nance de­vel­op­ment projects in at least three UNC-con­trolled dis­tricts.

He al­so raised con­cerns about what he de­scribed as three years of in­ad­e­quate sup­plies for con­struc­tion teams re­spon­si­ble for main­tain­ing roads, drains and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

Barath al­leged that mu­nic­i­pal work­ers con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­out suf­fi­cient ma­te­ri­als, tools and equip­ment to un­der­take ba­sic re­pairs.

“How can the PNM-led coun­cil jus­ti­fy spend­ing over $500,000 on a week of cel­e­bra­tions while its own con­struc­tion teams lack the ma­te­ri­als to car­ry out ba­sic re­pairs?” he ques­tioned.

The UNC rep­re­sen­ta­tives are de­mand­ing a de­tailed break­down of the pro­posed ex­pen­di­ture, dis­clo­sure of de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tions across all elec­toral dis­tricts and ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress short­ages af­fect­ing mu­nic­i­pal work­ers.

Barath in­sist­ed that the boy­cott was not in­tend­ed to un­der­mine Tu­na­puna’s cul­tur­al her­itage or civic recog­ni­tion, but rather to de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty in the man­age­ment of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

“Our de­ci­sion to boy­cott Tu­na­puna Week is a state­ment of prin­ci­ple and a de­mand for ac­count­abil­i­ty,” he said.

The UNC rep­re­sen­ta­tives have vowed not to par­tic­i­pate in the fes­tiv­i­ties un­til their con­cerns about de­vel­op­ment fund­ing and ex­pen­di­ture pri­or­i­ties are ad­dressed.

Ques­tions were sent to cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin con­cern­ing the al­le­ga­tions and the coun­cil’s ex­pen­di­ture on the cel­e­bra­tions. How­ev­er, he did not re­spond up to press time.