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De­spite the in­sis­tence from Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen that the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to PNM-led re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions was sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er than the UNC’s cor­po­ra­tions, mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion con­tend that the avail­able fund­ing would bare­ly be enough to cov­er much-need­ed main­te­nance and re­pairs.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions be­fore en­ter­ing Par­lia­ment on Fri­day af­ter­noon, Ameen de­fend­ed the cur­rent bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions and dis­missed al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal favouritism, not­ing that PNM cor­po­ra­tions were ben­e­fit­ing from more fund­ing than their UNC coun­ter­parts. “What I can tell you is, if you cal­cu­late all the al­lo­ca­tions to all the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and you to­tal the PNM and you to­tal the UNC, the PNM cor­po­ra­tions ac­tu­al­ly have more in terms of the al­lo­ca­tion,” Ameen said.

How­ev­er, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon De No­bri­ga said he was not con­vinced that the cur­rent al­lo­ca­tion would im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for res­i­dents in PNM con­stituen­cies, as he warned of wors­en­ing in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vices.