Ameen, Al-Rawi argue over local government funding

AND SEAN DOUGLAS

ST Augustine MP and the Opposition shadow minister for local government Khadija Ameen, is calling on Rural Development and Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi to come clean and state clearly if taxpayers’ money is being used to fund the PNM’s election’s campaign.

Ameen referred to a Facebook post on the mayor of San Fernando Junia Regrello’s page in which he credited Al-Rawi who is also the MP for San Fernando West with providing funding for road paving work to be done in the city.

“I call on Faris to tell us where the funds coming from. Are you using tax payer’s dollars to campaign, to try and buy votes in the city of San Fernando because you are afraid to lose.”

Both Regrello and Al-Rawi in response said the money came from an increase in funding that was allocated across the board to all regional corporations.

At a news conference on Tuesday held at the Siparia Borough Corporation, Ameen displayed a photocopy of the Regrello’s post where she joined SRC chairman Dinesh Sankersingh who spoke about the challenges in securing funding to service areas which falls within the remit of the region.

Sankersing said, owing to a shortage in allocation, most of his corporation's trucks were not working, making it difficult to remove material from the stockpile at Fyzabad to pave roads.

While other corporations are being neglected Ameen said, “What we are seeing in fact, in the city of San Fernando, the mayor is boasting of development in his area. I saw a wonderful Facebook post where he is indicating that the MP for San Fernando West has provided additional funding for work to be done while council is dissolved.

“My question to TT is, is the San Fernando City Corporation (SFCC) being given taxpayer dollars to campaign. Where is the additional funding coming from and is it monies from our coffers being used to campaign.”

She asked, “Is the PNM so afraid of losing the SFCC that they have resorted to taking taxpayer’s dollars to campaign when other regions are severely neglected because you are afraid of losing the city of San Fernando?”

She noted, in almost every region, chairmen, mayors and former councillors have spoken of challenges to get additional funding from the Rural Development and Local Government Ministry (RLDG) to fix roads and here we have the mayor of San Fernando boasting about additional funding.”

San Fernando is one of the critical seats in this local government election.

Both the People’s National Movement (PNM) which lost ground in the last local government election conceding three seats to the United National Congress (UNC) and the UNC are battling to retain control of this corporation that could determine which side is victorious.

One of those former UNC councillor Marcus Girdharrie has crossed over to the PNM and contesting the same seat he held on a PNM ticket this time around. There is interest to see whether the votes cast in the last election were for him personally or for the party which he represented at the time.

Both the PNM and the UNC are scheduled to hold meetings in San Fernando and Marabella on Saturday night as they drum up support in the countdown to August 14 elections.

Ameen accused the PNM or running scared, pointing out that this is why they are pumping additional resources through government agencies to campaign and “mamaguy” the people when they did not properly service them or fix roads.

“We must not accept taxpayers’ dollars being used to campaign and try to give the PNM a boost because they have not performed.”

In a response on his Facebook page on Tuesday, Regrello said, owing to the increase funding allocated to all corporations by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the SFCC was able to put all its resources to use to remedy situations identified by citizens, in all the electoral districts.

Al-Rawi forwarded a document to the Newsday which outlined an increase in funding for all 14 corporations in the mid-year review with the bulk going to Port of Spain (134 per cent), Tunapuna Piarco (62 per cent) and San Fernando (29 per cent).

Siparia would have received a 14 per cent increase, amounting to $5,487,000.00, moving the previous estimate from $38,500,000.00 to the new allocation of $43,987,000.00.

Al-Rawi addressed the issue at a PNM rally at Hillview College, Tunapuna, on Thursday night

He said at the budget and mid term review debates he had listed allocations to all 14 corporations. He said every corporation had got an increase.

"Not (just) San Fernando, not Tunapuna, not Arima but including Siparia, Penal/Debe, Princes Town."

The increases were published, he said.

For each corporation, Al-Rawi considered the original 100 per cent allocation in the 2023 budget estimate and added to it the percentage increase given in the mid year review. For Port of Spain this was 129 per cent (from $389 million to $501 million). He read the San Fernando figure as 234 per cent (from $32 million to $76 million).

Al-Rawi said Arima got in total some 109 per cent of its budget estimate (moving from $27 million to $30 million.) The Point Fortin figure was 105 per cent (from $28 million to $29 million). He read Chaguanas as 112 per cent (from $24 million to $27 million.)

Among the other figures he gave were "132 per cent" for San Juan/Laventille (moving from $31 million to $41 million) and "162 per cent" for Tunapuna/Piarco (moving from $28 million to $45 million) plus "114 per cent" for Siparia (moving from $38 million to $43 million), "117 per cent" for Penal/Debe (moving from $22 million to $26 million) and "111 per cent" for Princes Town (moving from $22 million to $26 million.

He said certain big increases shown were to pay workers' backpay, with cheques being made out right now at respective corporations. The crowd clapped.

Al-Rawi said, "Penal/Debe in 2021 got $9.3 million. Penal/Debe, under the PNM, got $26.2 million this year.

"Siparia got $10.9 million in 2021. Siparia got $44 million this year."

He said in promoting local government reform, the Government was saying to give power to both "red" and "yellow" corporations, referring to PNM and UNC colours.

"Nowhere in the law does it say the law applies only to the PNM. We say it applies to every single corporation, even where we don't have one seat in the corporation."