Richard Lord

Gov­ern­ment is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­missal of eight em­ploy­ees from the T&T Con­sulate in New York, ac­cord­ing to re­li­able sources yes­ter­day. The work­ers were dis­missed last month af­ter fail­ing an ex­am they claim they were not pre­pared for. For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an was un­avail­able for com­ment on the mat­ter over the past few days be­cause he is re­port­ed­ly ill. The con­sulate work­ers, with their length of ser­vice rang­ing from sev­en months to 23 years, are de­mand­ing their jobs back and have asked the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) to as­sist in that re­gard. One of the dis­missed work­ers, An­geli­na Ram­lal said no one from the Gov­ern­ment had con­tact­ed them since their dis­missal. She said she would like to know "why were the work­ers at the con­sulate in New York be­ing sin­gled out for such un­fair treat­ment."

She said the New York Con­sulate was prob­a­bly the busiest T&T mis­sion in the US and served the largest T&T?pop­u­la­tion. She said such whole­sale fir­ings nev­er take place at T&T mis­sions in Wash­ing­ton and Mi­a­mi. "We are not in­volved in pol­i­tics. We don't even get to vote at elec­tion time," she in­sist­ed. She said the work­ers were not pre­pared for the ex­am as it was not the norm for it to be giv­en and at such short no­tice. Ram­lal said the for­mer work­ers were al­so nev­er pre­sent­ed with the re­sults. "I don't know if I got one mark out of 100 or ze­ro out of 100," she said. In a Ju­ly 7 let­ter to Am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton Neil Parsan, Ram­lal said she was brought to tears af­ter be­ing in­formed of her dis­missal. She re­called be­ing told by Con­sul Ur­vashi Ram­nar­ine: "You need to give me your name tag and key card. You are to pack your per­son­al stuff be­cause I have to es­cort you out. If you need a box, I can get you one." Ram­lal said she had to walk to the train sta­tion with three bags to await the ar­rival of her hus­band. She said she had not re­ceived her gra­tu­ity for a pre­vi­ous con­tract pe­ri­od with the con­sulate which end­ed about a year ago.