Local Govt officials accuse Ameen of peddling ‘misinformation’

Senior Political Reporter

Local Government Ministry officials yesterday rubbished Opposition MP Khadijah Ameen’s claims that regional corporations were “instructed” to cease hiring workers and could be forced to “terminate” employees.

Ameen made the claims on Sunday during the UNC’s media briefing, saying they had received information about it.

She said UNC-controlled corporations would try to save workers’ jobs by doing virement/transfer of funds for various services—public health expenditure, scavenging, garbage collection road and state traces maintenance—to pay workers’ expenditure costs.

Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi is overseas. However, ministry officials who trashed Ameen’s statements as “misinformation,” pointed out, “What is happening is the normal annual process which occurs at the end of a fiscal year, where corporations vire extra annual allocation funds from one area to pay for items in another that may need it.

“This is usually done to use up the full annual allocation for a fiscal year, since any extra that is left is returned to the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year.

“Corporations haven’t been ‘instructed’ to terminate staff or stop hiring people. Of course, if they budgeted for 200 workers for example and hired more than that, there would be problems and limitations. But no ‘instruction’ has been issued by the ministry in writing.”

The official said all staff have been paid on time and terminating employment is not even under consideration.

“Please note that corporations have monthly paid staff who are public servants who aren’t fired, since that’s this administration’s policy. As you recall, the Prime Minister noted during the pandemic that public servants kept their jobs. We don’t touch personnel expenditure.

“Also note, that the ministry doesn’t have jurisdiction over daily paid staff. If there’s a shortfall of funds to pay such workers, corporations can do the normal process of viring/transferring funds from one area to wages expenditure,” the official added.

The official said no complaint has been made to the ministry about a lack of funds by any corporation.

Meanwhile, Government officials, who noted Ameen had served in local government, accused her of attempting to make a “political bacchanal” out of a known annual process.

They also accused Ameen, a former councillor and chairman of the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation, of seeking to “hype UNC’s image as ‘saving workers jobs’ when she’d have known jobs aren’t in jeopardy due to the virement system.

“They’re in control unless UNC corporations really want those jobs to be in jeopardy and refuse to do the virements,” the official said.

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