Mayors, chairmen decry budget cuts to PNM-controlled corporations

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has pledged to join trade unions in their planned Oc­to­ber 30 protest against the Gov­ern­ment, claim­ing work­ers, fam­i­lies and res­i­dents in Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-con­trolled mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties are be­ing sub­ject­ed to po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion.

His com­ments came af­ter may­ors and chair­men of PNM-con­trolled re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions learned through the 2027 Bud­get doc­u­ments that al­lo­ca­tions to their mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties had been re­duced by a com­bined $49.55 mil­lion.

Speak­ing at Port-of-Spain City Hall yes­ter­day, where PNM may­ors and cor­po­ra­tion chair­men gath­ered to dis­cuss the is­sue, Al­leyne ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­duc­ing fund­ing to op­po­si­tion-con­trolled mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties while ig­nor­ing con­cerns af­fect­ing res­i­dents across po­lit­i­cal lines.