Gail Alexan­der

Even though the Op­po­si­tion PNM is act­ing like Scrooge about its "hot-spot" job plan, Gov­ern­ment will al­so be dis­trib­ut­ing Christ­mas ham­pers this year as well, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced yes­ter­day. Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing a break in yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment ses­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­ment­ed on the neg­a­tive re­sponse em­a­nat­ing from PNM MPs on the 20,000 job plan for hot-spot and low in­come ar­eas which she an­nounced on Wednes­day. Some PNM MPs have said the plan was an in­sult to their ar­eas and to them since they had not been con­sult­ed.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "They don't seem to un­der­stand the suf­fer­ing some fam­i­lies en­dure and can't af­ford to buy a plate of food when the day comes. They're do­ing the same thing they did last year when we gave out the Christ­mas ham­pers – em­ploy­ing a Scrooge men­tal­i­ty when they re­fused to ac­cept our ham­pers." "Well, we're giv­ing out ham­pers again this year to every con­stituen­cy and if they refuse to take them, we'll work through lo­cal gov­ern­ment and com­mu­ni­ty groups to en­sure that in every con­stituen­cy there'll be per­sons who will have a ham­per for Christ­mas."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the job plan will not on­ly help some per­sons put food on their ta­ble , but will al­so act as a de­ter­rent to crime and as­sist the econ­o­my as well. "It's more in­sult­ing for a per­son not to be able to get a job," she added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said as­pects of the plan would be done dif­fer­ent­ly to the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment's so­cial pro­grammes. She would be go­ing to Dun­can Street next Tues­day to launch the plan her­self. On PNM's ac­cu­sa­tions that she was play­ing "pol­i­tics" on the is­sue Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that she was be­ing po­lit­i­cal in so far as she had been elect­ed to serve peo­ple and that was her po­lit­i­cal du­ty. "We're not ma­nip­u­lat­ing and bru­tal­is­ing peo­ple to come to meet­ings," she added.