PM: Local govt has been under-performing for years

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has crit­i­cised the per­for­mance of the coun­try’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem, say­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery is poor and cit­i­zens are not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey.

She says the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed ex­pan­sion from 14 to 17 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions will help ad­dress those short­com­ings, with more staff, a more eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of fi­nan­cial re­sources and stronger su­per­vi­sion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment work­ers.

Re­veal­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to bring the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026 to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said, “Every­one knows that lo­cal gov­ern­ment has been un­der-per­form­ing for years. Ser­vice de­liv­ery is poor and cit­i­zens are not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey. By in­creas­ing the num­ber of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions from 14 to 17, we will im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of ser­vice de­liv­ery to cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing build­ing in­spec­tions, de­vel­op­ment ap­provals, the clean­ing of wa­ter­cours­es and built in­fra­struc­ture, in­sect con­trol and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices. There will be more staff to serve cit­i­zens, fi­nan­cial re­sources will be dis­trib­uted more eq­ui­tably, and su­per­vi­so­ry over­sight of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment work­ers will be strength­ened.”