The gov­ern­ment is set to spend just over $5 mil­lion on short-term con­tract­ed work­ers un­der the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces Pro­gramme, as prepa­ra­tions for Car­ni­val 2026 in­ten­si­fy, with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of both new and ex­ist­ing mu­nic­i­pal work­ers now un­der close scruti­ny.

The dis­clo­sure was made by Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence. She said the spe­cial Car­ni­val phase of the na­tion­al up­keep pro­gramme be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 2 and will run un­til Feb­ru­ary 28.

Cab­i­net ap­proved $5,363,520 to fund the one-month ini­tia­tive, which will see more than 1,000 work­ers hired on short-term con­tracts. The work­force will be or­gan­ised in­to 86 teams of 12 peo­ple, de­ployed across mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions for four-week as­sign­ments.