PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment spent $71 mil­lion more on “short-term” con­tract work­ers in the last fis­cal year than the year pre­vi­ous.

This was high­light­ed in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Re­port for 2023, which was tabled in Par­lia­ment last week Fri­day.

The re­port stat­ed, “For the fi­nan­cial year 2023, $300,270,127.32 was spent on Short-Term Em­ploy­ment. An in­crease of 31 per cent from the pre­vi­ous year’s ex­pen­di­ture of $229,270,781.”

The re­port al­so not­ed that in most cas­es, it ap­peared these con­tracts were teth­ered to State agen­cies and min­istries for longer than six months de­spite the de­f­i­n­i­tion of Short-Term Em­ploy­ment in the re­port.

It stat­ed, “Short-Term Ex­pen­di­ture as Short-Term or re­volv­ing ex­pen­di­ture in spe­cif­ic Gov­ern­ment De­part­ments and Agen­cies where each em­ploy­ee’s term does not ex­ceed six months.”

The re­port said this sug­gest­ed many agen­cies were not fol­low­ing prop­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and that this trend be ad­dressed.

The re­port said, “Whilst Au­dit was un­aware of a pol­i­cy di­rec­tive which gov­erned re­cruit­ment of per­sons un­der Short-Term Em­ploy­ment, it was not­ed that there were many in­stances of per­sons be­ing kept on for con­tin­u­ous pe­ri­ods sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­ceed­ing six months.”

The note con­tin­ued, “This is con­trary to good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and opens up the Gov­ern­ment to li­a­bil­i­ty. It is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed that a pol­i­cy di­rec­tive be im­ple­ment­ed in re­la­tion to this ex­pen­di­ture.”

The Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion has con­tin­u­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ed against the prac­tice of plac­ing work­ers on re­peat­ed short-term con­tracts.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste de­scribed the in­crease in mon­ey spent on hir­ing short-term work­ers as “a con­tin­u­a­tion of the ex­ploita­tion of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion”.

He said, “We have al­ways said it and I re­it­er­ate that the Gov­ern­ment has been very de­lib­er­ate in try­ing to per­pet­u­ate these short-term con­tracts in so much that it’s all about pow­er, the pow­er to hire and fire per­sons. And at the end of the day, it’s a case of per­sons not able to plan their lives be­cause they have no kind of se­cu­ri­ty of tenure. This is the un­ten­able.”

Bap­tiste claimed that about 50 per cent of the jobs in pub­lic ser­vice re­main un­filled. He said the Gov­ern­ment seemed to have favoured this prac­tice.

“Work­ers are not be­ing giv­en de­cent work, they’ve not been al­lowed to plan and or­gan­ise their lives by try­ing to per­pet­u­ate this con­tract em­ploy­ment. As you may be well aware, more than 50 per cent of the po­si­tions in the ser­vice have not been filled. They’re sim­ply left va­cant and rather than seek to have them filled, in­stead by­pass­ing the ser­vice com­mis­sion and hir­ing peo­ple on con­tract. That’s a way of politi­cians be­ing able to give jobs to their boys and their girls and to their peo­ple. Yes, that’s the in­tent be­hind it,” Bap­tiste claimed.

On the PSA web­site, there is a sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to ad­vis­ing con­tract work­ers about their rights.

It stat­ed, “The PSA be­lieves that all work that is con­tin­u­ous in na­ture should be per­ma­nent work and short-term con­tracts should not be used to fill such po­si­tions. Con­tract work­ers do not have the se­cu­ri­ty of tenure and there­fore of­ten­times can­not se­cure res­i­den­tial mort­gages and oth­er ben­e­fits as a per­ma­nent work­er. Con­tract work­ers do not be­long to a pen­sion plan but are paid a gra­tu­ity at the end of the con­tract in lieu of such pen­sion.”

It added, “It is nei­ther fair, nor just and it is cer­tain­ly not in the in­ter­est of the work­er who is the per­son im­me­di­ate­ly con­cerned or the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole, or in ac­cord with eq­ui­ty, good con­science and the prin­ci­ples and prac­tices of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions...”

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port list­ed sev­er­al State agen­cies and min­istries where short-term con­tract ex­pen­di­ture ex­ceed­ed $15 mil­lion.

In the re­port, it was high­light­ed that eight peo­ple had ex­ceed­ed the stip­u­lat­ed six-month pe­ri­od and had been em­ployed con­tin­u­ous­ly since the in­cep­tion of the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion in 2021.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ac­tu­al date of em­ploy­ment could not be ver­i­fied, the re­port said.