Ameen defends allocations to corporations

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen is de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed 2027 al­lo­ca­tions to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, ar­gu­ing that fund­ing de­ci­sions are guid­ed by their abil­i­ty to utilise the mon­ey pro­vid­ed, with ad­di­tion­al re­sources avail­able where jus­ti­fied.

Ameen faced sus­tained ques­tion­ing from Op­po­si­tion MPs dur­ing Tues­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ex­am­i­na­tion of her min­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly over re­duc­tions in al­lo­ca­tions for road re­pairs, drainage, dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties in sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions, in­clud­ing Port-of-Spain.

Ameen pushed back against sug­ges­tions that the re­duced al­lo­ca­tions would nec­es­sar­i­ly un­der­mine the de­liv­ery of es­sen­tial ser­vices, point­ing to in­stances where cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived ad­di­tion­al fund­ing dur­ing the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year, de­spite ini­tial­ly re­ceiv­ing small­er sums.