Minister Persad-Bissessar laid a bill creating three new boroughs in Barataria, St. Augustine and Couva. It expands municipalities from 14 to 17.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar laid the Municipal Corporations (Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the House of Representatives on Monday, defending the government’s decision to create three new municipalities in Barataria, St. Augustine and Couva as part of a broader local government reform. The bill, which will come up for debate in the House this week, increases the number of municipal corporations nationwide from 14 to 17.
Persad-Bissessar said the reform addresses decades of stagnant municipal boundaries despite significant population growth and shifting development patterns, which she said has left some municipalities serving much larger populations than others within boundaries set decades ago. “This Bill seeks to address these inequalities by creating new municipalities, adjusting boundaries and ensuring that Local Government better reflects the communities it serves,” she said in a statement, adding that the changes are intended to improve service delivery in areas including building inspections, development approvals, watercourse cleaning and insect control. She said Trinidad and Tobago employs roughly 13,000 people in local government, but criticized poor service delivery, saying, “After 10 a.m. we can hardly see anyone working outside,” and said both citizens and the government were “fed up” with the status quo.
Persad-Bissessar linked the reform to Port of Spain’s traffic congestion, saying hundreds of thousands of commuters spend up to six hours daily traveling to and from the capital. She said creating the new boroughs and a new city would lay the groundwork to shift public and private sector services out of Port of Spain and into the new municipal centers, aiming to reduce the daily commuter burden. She said the reform would also bring more staff to serve citizens, a more equitable distribution of financial resources, and strengthened supervisory oversight of local government workers. “These changes are about people, not politics,” she said. “We are building a Local Government system that works for ALL the people.”
This report is based on information from a statement by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and TTT News.