Port-of-Spain workers to receive June salaries

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne says City Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers will fi­nal­ly re­ceive their June salaries af­ter the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­leased the funds.

In a so­cial me­dia post to­day, Al­leyne an­nounced that the Cor­po­ra­tion had col­lect­ed a cheque for $2,188,679 from the Min­istry to cov­er June 2026 salaries for the City's civ­il ser­vants.

"I am pleased to an­nounce that good sense and truth has fi­nal­ly pre­vailed at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment," he wrote.

"A short while ago, the POS Cor­po­ra­tion col­lect­ed a cheque from the Min­istry for June 2026 salaries for the City's civ­il ser­vants.

"The City Trea­sur­er's De­part­ment is cur­rent­ly at work pro­cess­ing these salary pay­ments."

Al­leyne thanked the Cor­po­ra­tion's em­ploy­ees for their pa­tience dur­ing the de­lay.

"I would like to thank our hard­work­ing civ­il ser­vants for their for­bear­ance dur­ing this un­pleas­ant pe­ri­od."

How­ev­er, he warned fund­ing re­mains un­cer­tain be­yond June.

"The City still has no al­lo­ca­tion for salary pay­ments for Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber 2026. We will con­tin­ue to en­gage the Min­istry to rec­ti­fy this fis­cal fi­as­co in lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

"We will al­so con­tin­ue to en­gage the Min­istry on the wage rate in­crease and back­pay for our dai­ly rat­ed work­ers."

Yes­ter­day, Al­leyne re­vealed the Min­istry had ap­proved the trans­fer of funds need­ed to cov­er June salaries but ex­plained work­ers would re­main un­paid un­til the Min­istry of Fi­nance com­plet­ed the trans­fer process.

At a news con­fer­ence at City Hall in Port-of-Spain, he said the ap­proval came af­ter months of warn­ings the Cor­po­ra­tion was run­ning out of mon­ey to pay staff. He al­so main­tained no pro­vi­sions had yet been made to cov­er salaries for Ju­ly, Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber and re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions the Cor­po­ra­tion had de­layed mak­ing its re­quest for fund­ing.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said the union had been en­gag­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­solve the salary is­sue.

In a Face­book post ad­dressed to month­ly paid em­ploy­ees of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, Thomas said the PSA had been in­formed the Cor­po­ra­tion col­lect­ed the cheque on Wednes­day.

She al­so dis­put­ed the con­tents of a Ju­ly 1 mem­o­ran­dum is­sued to civ­il ser­vants, which said, "we are await­ing the com­ple­tion of all nec­es­sary process­es..."

"The PSA has been in­formed that THE CHEQUE WAS COL­LECT­ED BY THE COR­PO­RA­TION TO­DAY," the Face­book post said.