Port-of-Spain Mayor raises alarm over regional corporations’ ‘financial fiasco’

Port of Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has be­come the lat­est PNM lo­cal gov­ern­ment fig­ure to push back against Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, ac­cus­ing her of de­flect­ing from what he de­scribed as a wors­en­ing fis­cal cri­sis across mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

In a Face­book post, Al­leyne said the Min­is­ter’s fo­cus on mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions’ sup­port for cul­tur­al and her­itage ac­tiv­i­ties was a “failed at­tempt to dis­tract from the on­go­ing Fis­cal Fi­as­co from the 2026 Bud­get.”

He added: “Here is the naked truth: All Cor­po­ra­tions are short of mon­ey to pay pub­lic ser­vant salaries and/or NIS con­tri­bu­tions!”

Al­leyne claimed the City of Port of Spain would be un­able to meet salary or NIS oblig­a­tions af­ter May 2026. He said at least one cor­po­ra­tion had not paid trav­el­ling al­lowances since Au­gust 2025.

He said the con­cerns were raised by may­ors, chair­men, CEOs and fi­nance of­fi­cers across all 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

Al­leyne al­so point­ed to cuts in garbage col­lec­tion fund­ing, say­ing the city would be un­able to pay east Port of Spain garbage con­trac­tors af­ter June 2026.

“This is the Fis­cal Fi­as­co: No mon­ey to pay pub­lic ser­vants. No mon­ey to pay NIS. No mon­ey to pick up garbage and no mon­ey to pay for parts to fix ve­hi­cles, as­phalt to fix roads or ce­ment to fix pave­ments.”

He added: “Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment is rolling from the ICU to the Hos­pice. The Min­istry must fix this mess now!”

His com­ments come af­ter Ameen in­sist­ed mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions must pri­ori­tise set­tling debts be­fore host­ing events, amid push­back from Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin, who de­scribed her po­si­tion as “false and mis­lead­ing.”

Ameen has main­tained her guid­ance is con­sis­tent across all cor­po­ra­tions, say­ing they should not stage events while ow­ing con­trac­tors or car­ry­ing un­paid oblig­a­tions.

She said the pol­i­cy is not aimed at any sin­gle cor­po­ra­tion but re­flects a broad­er push for fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline, amid long­stand­ing chal­lenges in­clud­ing un­der­fund­ing, weak fi­nan­cial prac­tices and ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debt.

The Min­is­ter said es­sen­tial ser­vices such as road re­pairs and in­fra­struc­ture must take pri­or­i­ty over cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, while urg­ing cor­po­ra­tions to set­tle oblig­a­tions be­fore seek­ing ad­di­tion­al event fund­ing.

Austin said un­paid con­trac­tor bal­ances, par­tic­u­lar­ly for scav­eng­ing ser­vices, stem from in­suf­fi­cient cen­tral gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tions rather than mis­man­age­ment.