ST Augustine MP Khadijah Ameen has accused the PNM of performing "political liposuction" on local government.

She made this claim during her contribution to the budget debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Liposuction is a type of surgery which uses suction to remove fat from areas of the body, such as the stomach, hips, thighs, buttocks, arms or neck.

Ameen told MPs that people familiar with this procedure know it could result in situations where patients are "unhealthy and gaunt."

She claimed this is what the PNM is doing to local government corporations through its local government reform.

Ameen dismissed an earlier contribution by Rural Development and Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi about positive developments in local government and the role that reform was playing in some of those developments.

"The PNM does not care about local government. The UNC always has, because it is people-focused."

Ameen disagreed with Al-Rawi description of the reporting of crime in Trinidad and Tobago as "a diet of negativity." She said it was "a diet of truth."

She said the truth of the PNM's performance in local government and on other national issues were reflected in the results of the August 14 local government elections.

Ameen told PNM MPs, "You lost."

Those elections led to a seven-seven tie between the PNM and the UNC.

She questioned why the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) did not provide audited financial statements to Parliament from 2016-2021.

Ameen claimed this fuelled the belief that PNM friends and financiers were benefiting from CEPEP contracts.

She scoffed at apps which Al-Rawi said were being developed to serve people at local-government levevl.

"You continue to announce apps that have no application to the people," she told him, adding that Al-Rawi could become known soon as "the app man."

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