PNM: Govt redrawing local govt map to help UNC

Op­po­si­tion MPs are ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to re­struc­ture the lo­cal gov­ern­ment map to give the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) an ad­van­tage at the next lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs Colm Im­bert, Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Ka­reem Mar­celle crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­crease the num­ber of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions from 14 to 17, ques­tion­ing both the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the changes and the process used to ar­rive at the pro­posed new mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

The crit­i­cism fol­lows the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, which pro­pos­es the cre­ation of new mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties at Barataria, St Au­gus­tine and Cou­va, along with changes to sev­er­al ex­ist­ing mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries.