Ameen, PoS Mayor war over salary shortfall

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A dis­pute has erupt­ed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion over whether the cap­i­tal city has suf­fi­cient fund­ing to pay hun­dreds of mu­nic­i­pal work­ers.

This, af­ter Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen yes­ter­day dis­missed claims that the cor­po­ra­tion lacks the mon­ey to pay salaries, in­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready re­leased the nec­es­sary funds and ac­cus­ing the cor­po­ra­tion of “play­ing pet­ty pol­i­tics” with work­ers.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Ameen said she was shocked af­ter see­ing a memo cir­cu­lat­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer to the union rep­re­sent­ing month­ly-paid em­ploy­ees, warn­ing that salaries could not be paid.

“I was rather tak­en aback last evening when I saw cir­cu­lat­ing, a memo from the CEO of Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion in­form­ing them that they will not have monies to pay salaries. To the point where I thought this was some kind of fake memo,” Ameen said.

She said there had been “ab­solute­ly no con­sul­ta­tion” with the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment be­fore the memo was is­sued.

“Had the CEO or may­or reached out to us, we would have in­formed them that we had re­ceived, as every min­istry re­ceived from the Min­istry of Fi­nance yes­ter­day, a memo in­di­cat­ing that the process had been com­plet­ed and the war­rant con­firm­ing that mon­ey is avail­able.”

Ameen main­tained that no pub­lic ser­vant should re­ceive a late ,salary be­cause the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready re­leased the re­quired fund­ing.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­leased the monies for all pub­lic ser­vants to be paid and they ought to be paid on time. Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion is ei­ther mis­in­formed or mis­in­form­ing work­ers.”

She al­so ac­cused the cor­po­ra­tion of pri­ori­tis­ing cel­e­bra­tions over its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

“It is al­so very iron­ic that the may­or of Port-of-Spain is send­ing out such a press re­lease in the mid­dle of his cel­e­bra­tions for City Week that in­volves a lot of ex­pens­es around en­ter­tain­ment. So, while you are win­ing and din­ing your­self and your as­so­ciates, you are telling work­ers that they will not get paid. We will not tol­er­ate that.”

How­ev­er, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne yes­ter­day main­tained that the cor­po­ra­tion has not re­ceived the ad­di­tion­al fund­ing re­quired to meet this month’s pay­roll.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Al­leyne said that as of 2 pm, the cor­po­ra­tion had re­ceived no sup­ple­men­tary al­lo­ca­tion.

“Up to 2 pm to­day (yes­ter­day), the city has re­ceived no ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion in or­der to make pay­roll for this month. No civ­il ser­vants in the city have been paid for June 2026.”

He said the cor­po­ra­tion nor­mal­ly re­leas­es salaries three work­ing days be­fore the end of the month, mean­ing pay­ments should have been processed on Thurs­day to reach em­ploy­ees by yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Al­leyne, 446 em­ploy­ees have been af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing more than 180 city po­lice of­fi­cers.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion faces a salary and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) short­fall of near­ly $13 mil­lion, a garbage col­lec­tion short­fall of al­most $4 mil­lion and more than $1 mil­lion for wages and CO­LA.

“If the min­istry can’t give us mon­ey to pay civ­il ser­vant salaries, when are they go­ing to give us the mon­ey to pay dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers’ back­pay and wage in­crease?” Al­leyne asked.

The is­sue was first raised pub­licly on Thurs­day night by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Mara­bel­la.

Beck­les again ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of de­lib­er­ate­ly re­duc­ing al­lo­ca­tions to Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions while in­creas­ing fund­ing to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions.

Beck­les ar­gued that the fund­ing cuts had af­fect­ed garbage col­lec­tion, drainage main­te­nance and oth­er mu­nic­i­pal ser­vices and claimed some cor­po­ra­tions were strug­gling to meet pay­roll oblig­a­tions.

“But let the may­or of San Fer­nan­do tell you, and the may­or of Port-of-Spain, they have no mon­ey to pay salaries this month, the cor­po­ra­tion work­ers more than like­ly will not get salary this month,” Beck­les said.