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!”