“Don’t throw a fete if you are ow­ing mon­ey.”

That was the mes­sage from Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen yes­ter­day, as she warned mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions bur­dened by hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in debt to pri­ori­tise set­tling ar­rears.

Ameen spoke with re­porters af­ter meet­ing may­ors, chair­men and CEOs at the San Fer­nan­do City Hall au­di­to­ri­um, where sub­mis­sions were be­ing fi­nalised ahead of the Gov­ern­ment’s mid-year bud­get re­view. She said the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem has long been strained by fi­nan­cial short­falls, with al­lo­ca­tions ap­proved in pre­vi­ous bud­gets but not re­leased.