Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Khadi­jah Ameen has con­firmed that a “hefty num­ber” of Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers from its 12 re­gion­al of­fices have been ter­mi­nat­ed to­day. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the af­fect­ed work­ers re­ceived their let­ters of ter­mi­na­tion this morn­ing. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia Ameen said this is part of an ef­fort to re­struc­ture URP and halt cor­rupt prac­tices which she said the in­com­ing Gov­ern­ment un­earthed. 

De­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s move Ameen said, “nor­mal­ly af­ter an elec­tion, you would have peo­ple be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, like a cou­ple of days af­ter or the week af­ter. We did not do that. As the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed, we are con­sid­er­ing re­struc­tur­ing these pro­grammes.” 

Asked how many work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed, Ameen said, “Well there are sev­er­al, all dif­fer­ent port­fo­lios, most of them work at re­gion­al of­fices, so it’s quite a hefty num­ber.” 

Ef­forts to get an ex­act fig­ure from URP head Fer­oze Khan have so far been un­suc­cess­ful. 

Ameen said this puts an end to the prac­tice of po­lit­i­cal par­ties re­plac­ing URP work­ers with its sup­port­ers on as­sum­ing of­fice. She said the UNC gov­ern­ment still held strain and con­tin­ued their em­ploy­ment for some months. 

Min­is­ter Ameen said some of the po­si­tions the ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers pre­vi­ous­ly held would be made non-ex­is­tent in the re­struc­tur­ing process. 

She de­nied that this was the gov­ern­ment’s move to shut down URP in­def­i­nite­ly. 

“We are in the process of re­struc­tur­ing. So what­ev­er new form it takes, we will have to hire  per­sons in what­ev­er for­mat we choose to roll out, and you will be ad­vised of that roll­out in due course.” 

Ameen said the State was los­ing mon­ey pay­ing peo­ple for jobs they were not do­ing. 

“There are per­sons who are em­ploy­ees on­ly on pa­per who are re­ceiv­ing ter­mi­na­tion let­ters. Ask them what they were do­ing. Ask them how much days they work.”

But San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said the lat­est dis­missals were a di­rect at­tack on his con­stituen­cy, a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment strong­hold. He con­firmed that 14 sup­port staff had re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion let­ters. One let­ter seen by Guardian Me­dia, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 4 and signed by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Mitchell, in­formed an em­ploy­ee with 11 years of ser­vice that their em­ploy­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, with one month’s salary in lieu of no­tice. 

Man­ning said work­ers were be­ing un­fair­ly tar­get­ed. “We be­lieve that San Fer­nan­do East, in par­tic­u­lar, is re­al­ly be­ing vic­timised by this Gov­ern­ment. It is cal­lous and un­car­ing for this UNC Gov­ern­ment to wait un­til the open­ing of the new school term to send peo­ple home who have chil­dren in school, who need sup­plies, who need uni­forms, and so on. It is cal­lous and un­car­ing, and we be­lieve that the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do East are be­ing vic­timised by this Gov­ern­ment, and it’s some­thing that we are not go­ing to stand for or tol­er­ate,” he said. 

He said sev­er­al dis­traught work­ers con­tact­ed him and oth­er au­thor­i­ties af­ter re­ceiv­ing their let­ters. “They have been string­ing these peo­ple along for quite some time, and they wait un­til the first week of the new school term to de­cide to send them home when they have chil­dren to feed and send to school. It is com­plete­ly and ut­ter­ly ridicu­lous.” 

Man­ning in­tends to host a press con­fer­ence with sev­er­al of the af­fect­ed work­ers at his of­fice to­mor­row.