PoSCC unable to pay civil servants’ June salaries

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne says a fis­cal cri­sis he warned about more than two months ago has now ma­te­ri­alised, af­ter the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion was un­able to meet its June pay­roll oblig­a­tions.

"I warned the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty over two months ago that lo­cal gov­ern­ment was head­ing for a fis­cal fi­as­co. The fis­cal fi­as­co is now here," Al­leyne said yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the cor­po­ra­tion was un­able to make pay­roll for civ­il ser­vants this month.

Al­leyne ar­gued that Gov­ern­ment in­struct­ing cor­po­ra­tions to pay civ­il ser­vants' back­pay with­out pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary bud­get al­lo­ca­tions amount­ed to poor fis­cal pol­i­cy.

"As a re­sult, the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion does not have enough al­lo­ca­tion to pay civ­il ser­vant salaries this month and we have no al­lo­ca­tion to pay salaries for Ju­ly, Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber," he said.

He called on the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to in­ter­vene.

"I am call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to pro­vide salaries for our hard­work­ing civ­il ser­vants," he said.

In a mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed June 25, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Michael John­son in­formed Pub­lic Ser­vices' As­so­ci­a­tion Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion Staff Side chair­man Revlon Cassie that civ­il ser­vants at the cor­po­ra­tion were ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence a de­lay in re­ceiv­ing their June salaries be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions.

John­son said the cor­po­ra­tion's Salaries and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowances line item had been sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­plet­ed.

"This sit­u­a­tion aris­es as a re­sult of the Cor­po­ra­tion's sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­plet­ed Salaries and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowances line item. As a re­sult, the Cor­po­ra­tion finds it­self in a po­si­tion where it does not have suf­fi­cient bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to meet its month­ly salary pay­ment com­mit­ment, for June 2026 through the rest of the fi­nan­cial year, un­til sup­ple­men­tal al­lo­ca­tions are re­ceived," John­son wrote.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion had al­ready sub­mit­ted re­quests for sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing as part of the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view and was await­ing the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion from the Min­istry of Fi­nance through the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

John­son added that he con­tin­ued to li­aise with the min­istry's Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to ex­pe­dite the pro­cess­ing of funds and min­imise in­con­ve­nience to staff.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen and is await­ing a re­sponse.