Ameen on garbage collection issue: We don’t play politics with rubbish

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen says Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-led cor­po­ra­tions are ex­ag­ger­at­ing the re­port­ed de­crease in al­lo­ca­tion they re­ceived from the Gov­ern­ment.

Fir­ing back, Ameen is telling the cor­po­ra­tions to put pol­i­tics aside and get the job done.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, she said, “We don’t play pol­i­tics with rub­bish. Do your work.”

Her com­ment came days af­ter Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Dr Kirk Meighoo ac­cused PNM-led cor­po­ra­tions of not col­lect­ing garbage on pur­pose. 

In a Face­book post on Wednes­day, Meighoo wrote, “Are the PNM cor­po­ra­tions not pick­ing up garbage on pur­pose? In to­tal, the sev­en PNM-led cor­po­ra­tions were al­lo­cat­ed $906,124,000 while the sev­en UNC cor­po­ra­tions were al­lo­cat­ed $410,115,000, a dif­fer­ence of $496,009,000.”

Adding to the pile of in­sults, Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der took to so­cial me­dia on Thurs­day to blame for­mer PNM mem­bers for gangs pre­vent­ing garbage pick-up.

Alexan­der post­ed, “Gangs are pre­vent­ing con­trac­tors from pick­ing up garbage in some HDC com­mu­ni­ties. To­day in Port-of-Spain guns were drawn on garbage men. Now po­lice have to es­cort them, all be­cause cer­tain per­sons con­nect­ed to cer­tain PNM for­mer min­is­ters are try­ing to ex­tort con­tracts from the State. Shar­ing this so pub­lic can be aware of what is tak­ing place.”

In re­sponse, MP Arou­ca/Trinci­ty Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said, “Let us be ab­solute­ly clear: there is no ev­i­dence to sup­port the reck­less claim that res­i­dents of HDC com­mu­ni­ties are threat­en­ing con­trac­tors or draw­ing guns on san­i­ta­tion work­ers. State­ments like these are dan­ger­ous, ir­re­spon­si­ble, and de­lib­er­ate­ly stig­ma­tise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who are al­ready bear­ing the brunt of se­ri­ous pub­lic-health risks.”

She added that peo­ple of Mal­oney and sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ties are not crim­i­nals.

“Mak­ing sen­sa­tion­al ac­cu­sa­tions with­out ev­i­dence un­der­mines pub­lic trust, fu­els fear, and dam­ages al­ready strained com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to some cor­po­ra­tions, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment’s bud­get cuts are to blame.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Josi­ah Austin said with a $4 mil­lion de­crease in funds from 2025 to 2026, the cor­po­ra­tion is do­ing its best to cov­er all of its ser­vices, but ad­mits that its dif­fi­cult to deal with garbage col­lec­tion in all ar­eas. 

“We are cur­rent­ly in a po­si­tion where we are con­sid­er­ing the oth­er ser­vices like the main road ser­vice and the school ser­vices be­cause we can’t keep up as is.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne who has been com­plain­ing about the trash, said that it’s al­so af­fect­ing Car­ni­val 2026 clean up.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day evening, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­demned the il­le­gal dump­ing of used tyres in Clax­ton Bay, de­scrib­ing it as law­less and dan­ger­ous.

“This law­less dump­ing oc­curred in For­res Park Trace, Clax­ton Bay. I sug­gest that these per­sons re­turn to the area and pick up their tyres. This is not the prop­er way to dis­pose of used tyres, and the own­ers of the prop­er­ty must al­so take steps to rec­ti­fy this mat­ter.”

She added, “If left unchecked, this will con­tribute to a myr­i­ad of health and en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems for res­i­dents and the area at large.”