DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has ter­mi­nat­ed 400 work­ers from the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

This was con­firmed by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen yes­ter­day.

The ter­mi­na­tion let­ters were dis­trib­uted to work­ers across the URP’s 12 re­gion­al of­fices yes­ter­day.

The de­ci­sion drew sharp crit­i­cism from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), a union rep­re­sen­ta­tive and ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers, who con­demned the move as “un­fair,” even as Min­is­ter Ameen de­nied any po­lit­i­cal mo­ti­va­tion.

How­ev­er, dur­ing an in­ter­view at her con­stituen­cy of­fice in Tu­na­puna, Ameen de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions, say­ing a re­struc­tur­ing of the "make work" pro­gramme was a nec­es­sary step to com­bat decades of en­trenched cor­rup­tion.

She re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that the dis­missals were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, stat­ing, “For decades, when­ev­er there is a change in gov­ern­ment, they would fire all the per­sons work­ing in URP and re­place them with peo­ple who are po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned to the gov­ern­ment. This time, we did not do that.”

“Quite frankly, if we op­er­at­ed like the PNM, all of those peo­ple would have been sent home as soon as the elec­tion was fin­ished. We did not do that. So, we are not vic­tim­is­ing any­one,” she added.

Ameen said re­cent au­dits un­cov­ered wide­spread ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, in­clud­ing “ghost gangs” and em­ploy­ees who ex­ist­ed on­ly on pa­per. She claimed one case in­volved a se­nior staff mem­ber’s daugh­ter study­ing in Ja­maica who was still list­ed as a paid of­fice work­er. Oth­er find­ings re­vealed work­ers sell­ing their deb­it cards to in­di­vid­u­als who col­lect­ed mul­ti­ple salaries, in some in­stances amass­ing as much as $100,000 per month. The min­is­ter said the scope of these fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had led to death threats against cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

She ex­plained that the re­struc­tur­ing aims to elim­i­nate fraud­u­lent em­ploy­ment and redi­rect funds to­ward “more mean­ing­ful jobs” with greater se­cu­ri­ty.

“We are not go­ing to re­place PNM ghosts with UNC ghosts. We are go­ing to re­place the ghost, pe­ri­od,” she stat­ed.

In con­demn­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s move yes­ter­day, PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les is­sued a ral­ly­ing call for all cit­i­zens to unite, as­sert­ing, “This is not about pol­i­tics. It is about sav­ing T&T from a ram­pag­ing and un­hinged UNC Gov­ern­ment.”

The PNM has pre­vi­ous­ly lament­ed a se­ries of ter­mi­na­tions since the new Gov­ern­ment took of­fice, with for­mer Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi point­ing to the fir­ing of 10,700 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers, 500 from WASA, and sig­nif­i­cant num­bers from two re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties. The PNM has pre­vi­ous­ly put the to­tal num­ber of fired work­ers since the new Gov­ern­ment took of­fice at over 30,000.

Work­ers an­gry; cite er­rors in ter­mi­na­tion let­ters

There was a som­bre at­mos­phere when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Port-of-Spain URP of­fice yes­ter­day, as anx­ious em­ploy­ees gath­ered hav­ing al­ready heard that ter­mi­na­tion let­ters were be­ing is­sued in Ari­ma. The un­cer­tain­ty weighed heav­i­ly on many work­ers, who ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over their fu­tures. Some ac­knowl­edged that the URP had long been a po­lit­i­cal tool, with suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions dis­miss­ing pre­vi­ous staff to hire their own sup­port­ers.

At the Tu­na­puna of­fice, work­ers hud­dled to­geth­er, some try­ing to en­cour­age oth­ers to speak out but re­main­ing re­luc­tant them­selves. One em­ploy­ee from Tu­na­puna, a shop stew­ard for the Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union, who has been with the URP since 2015, told Guardian Me­dia that 19 staff from her of­fice re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion let­ters yes­ter­day, with more ex­pect­ed from the women’s pro­gramme.

“That is a lot be­cause we have many young moth­ers be­tween the ages of 35 and 45. No­body is go­ing to em­ploy some­one at 45,” she said, high­light­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty many would face in find­ing new jobs.

“Ten years, some peo­ple are work­ing. So, you send home ten peo­ple who work­ing ten years with noth­ing? Just one month’s salary? Who have va­ca­tion, no va­ca­tion? Come on, we don’t do things like that. We have chil­dren go­ing to uni­ver­si­ty, sec­ondary school. We don’t have dunce chil­dren. My son go­ing to uni­ver­si­ty. PNM nev­er give me a house. I have a rent to pay. So what am I sup­posed to go and do?”

She al­so not­ed in­con­sis­ten­cies in the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters, which con­tained er­rors in em­ploy­ment dates and failed to ac­count for va­ca­tion leave.

“If you are com­ing with a let­ter, come with the facts and all the cor­rect in­for­ma­tion. Don’t come with er­rors on it,” she said, lament­ing that those work­ers whose let­ters con­tained er­rors were told to vis­it the head of­fice in San Juan to­day.

The union stew­ard urged the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide a clear plan for the dis­placed work­ers.

“If you know you’re go­ing to stop this, you should have some­thing in place,” she added. “Say, okay, you are be­ing sent home and you are go­ing to be ab­sorbed in a time­line of three months or four months in­to an­oth­er pro­gramme, or this is what we’re go­ing to do with you all. Noth­ing, just send home!”