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Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen says the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of rub­bish in cer­tain ar­eas is the re­sult of the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion di­vert­ing funds from re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to cre­ate ad­di­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and reaf­foresta­tion pro­gramme con­tracts.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ameen claimed that over $100 mil­lion had been redi­rect­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the award of con­tracts.

“What we ob­served is that sev­er­al re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions had a short­fall in al­lo­ca­tion; some of them were about two weeks, some of them as much as five months short on the amount that would cov­er the scav­eng­ing ser­vices with­in the re­gions. Al­most all cor­po­ra­tions are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed. What we have been do­ing is man­ag­ing fi­nances by do­ing vire­ments -trans­fer­ring mon­ey from one use to an­oth­er, and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has been co­op­er­at­ing with us in that process,” she said.