Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Khadijah Ameen says the National Programme for the Upkeep of Public Spaces (NPUPS) is set to restart following a hiatus, as provisions have been made for its funding in the upcoming national budget.
She commended the initiative’s success, noting that there have also been calls to broaden its reach, particularly to benefit more rural communities.
“Of course, we took a break and based on the allocations in the upcoming budget, we will resume the programme. There have been requests for the program to be expanded, particularly to target rural communities. During the July-August holidays, they were in schools and they completed 384 schools, early childhood centres, power washing, cutting grass, early childhood primary and secondary. We also were able to help like panyards, community centers, and other police youth groups, youth club buildings and so on.”
Minister Ameen said, however, there is a need to review the operations of regional corporations, particularly their productivity, manpower and available resources.
“There’s a deeper problem in terms of the productivity of corporation workers, which we are speaking with the unions on. And there’s also the issue of the disparity in resources that corporations have. You will have a corporation like point four seventeen thousand persons and a corporation like Tunapuna Piaco with 200,000 persons, and they their manpower, the supervision, the resources that they have, and really not equitable. So there is need for us to look at the how the boundaries are, the geographic space, they are responsible for the population density.”