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Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has warned that the cap­i­tal city could face se­ri­ous san­i­ta­tion chal­lenges fol­low­ing Car­ni­val 2026, as deep cuts to the City Cor­po­ra­tion’s bud­get and the clo­sure of CEPEP threat­en the tra­di­tion­al post-Car­ni­val clean-up op­er­a­tions.

Car­ni­val in Port-of-Spain in­cludes J’Ou­vert, the Ju­nior and Se­nior Pa­rade of the Bands, and sev­er­al oth­er large na­tion­al events that place enor­mous pres­sure on mu­nic­i­pal ser­vices. For sev­er­al years, clean-up op­er­a­tions were joint­ly co­or­di­nat­ed and fund­ed by the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion (POSCC) and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), with the in­volve­ment of mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers, con­trac­tors and state agen­cies, in­clud­ing CEPEP and the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL). How­ev­er, Al­leyne said the city was now in an un­cer­tain po­si­tion.

“With the clo­sure of CEPEP and the dras­tic re­duc­tion in the city’s bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for 2026, the coun­cil is deeply con­cerned that Port-of-Spain will not be clean on Ash Wednes­day morn­ing,” Al­leyne said.