Sammy: Penal/Debe allocation cut by $2.3M

This state of affairs was raised by councillor for Bronte, Brian Julien during the Opposition United National Congress’ (UNC) Monday Night Forum at the Tulsa Trace Hindu primary school in Penal. Julien said over 1,000 families were directly affected by the storm which not only ripped off roofs from buildings and destroyed crops and livestock but also caused massive flooding and landslides.

Corporation chairman Dr Allen Sammy, in a telephone interview, confirmed Julien’s remarks saying the reduction would affect the corporation’s ability to deliver goods and services in the sprawling region which stretches from Corinth Road and Cipero Road junction to Penal-Quinam Road.

“Everybody has been asked to cut their programme by ten percent. And our allocation was 23 million for recurrent expenditure, that is for such things as building box drains and while it doesn’t affect wages and salaries it has to do with casual labour, it has to do with construction, it has to do with development-type works, maintenance, cleaning, picking up garbage,” Sammy said. “This morning (Tuesday) we had an emergency session with all heads of departments and we were going through to see how we can move money around to fill gaps, to meet with commitments that will take us through for the next 90 days,” he said. “We are not getting any extra money from the state, not one state agency has come to our assistance after the flood except social services who are looking at all the requests for assistance,” he said.

“We have had no visit from the Minister of Works or his people, the Ministry of Agriculture has not contacted us, the Army has not contacted us, nobody has called so we have to make do with whatever allocation or resources we have,” he said.