SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Tack­le the re­cent ter­mi­na­tions of thou­sands of work­ers in the up­com­ing bud­get or face the con­se­quences that lie ahead. That’s the warn­ing from de­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist Dr Ralph Hen­ry to the Gov­ern­ment ahead of Bud­get 2026.

Hen­ry said the fir­ings can­not and should not be ig­nored in this fis­cal pack­age.

“The Gov­ern­ment has hard choic­es to make. I don’t think they can avoid at­tempt­ing to do some­thing. We have to take the bull by its horns. The prob­lem is that be­cause of the struc­ture of the econ­o­my, there is a sub­stan­tial num­ber of peo­ple who can’t find em­ploy­ment, and the Gov­ern­ment has to step in and try to have some­thing in place to pro­vide sus­te­nance for these peo­ple.”

Hen­ry be­lieves the coun­try’s grow­ing un­em­ploy­ment rate is wor­ry­ing.

Be­fore the UNC was elect­ed in­to of­fice in April 2025, the un­em­ploy­ment rate was 4.9 per cent for the first quar­ter of 2025 (Jan­u­ary to March), the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate stood at 54.3 per cent, and the em­ploy­ment-to-pop­u­la­tion ra­tio was 51.7 per cent.

The ter­mi­na­tions of thou­sands be­tween May and Sep­tem­ber are like­ly to in­crease the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) un­em­ploy­ment rates for the sec­ond and third quar­ters (from April to June and Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber) of 2025, which are yet to be re­leased on its web­site.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s PRO Faris Al-Rawi es­ti­mat­ed in Au­gust that “30,000 peo­ple” had been fired from their jobs in the first 100 days of the UNC be­ing elect­ed in­to of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, the job loss­es in­clude 11,000 Cepep work­ers, 5,000 forestry work­ers, 5,000 URP work­ers, 400 WASA work­ers, 1,600 work­ers from two Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, 200 change agents in the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry, 2,800 tem­po­rary Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers, and ten WASA man­agers, which amount­ed to 26,010 work­ers los­ing their jobs.

In Sep­tem­ber, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment had dis­missed 400 work­ers from the URP af­ter re­cent au­dits un­cov­ered wide­spread ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, in­clud­ing ghost gangs.

To date, the Gov­ern­ment has not dis­closed how many work­ers whose con­tracts came to an end were not re­newed or were ter­mi­nat­ed.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment has of­fered to pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, food cards and rent sup­port to in­di­vid­u­als who were ter­mi­nat­ed or ex­pe­ri­enced a loss of in­come once they are el­i­gi­ble.

More women un­em­ployed

The CSO’s lat­est da­ta for the first quar­ter of 2025 showed the coun­try had a work­force of 587,700 (323,300 males and 264,400 fe­males).

There were 558,900 em­ployed peo­ple, with 247,900 women and 311,000 men. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 494,200 were “not in the labour force”.

The da­ta al­so showed there were 28,900 “to­tal un­em­ployed” peo­ple, 25,800 with­out jobs and seek­ing work, and 3,200 fell in the cat­e­go­ry “oth­er un­em­ployed”.

An ex­am­i­na­tion of the sta­tis­tics re­vealed there were 28,900 un­em­ployed peo­ple (12,300 males and 16,600 fe­males).

The Cen­tral Bank of T&T Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port dat­ed May 2025 stat­ed that dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025, job ad­ver­tise­ments in the dai­ly news­pa­pers de­clined.

On­ly four re­trench­ment no­tices were filed with the Min­istry of Labour for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to April 2025, com­pared to the 96 peo­ple in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2024.

The un­em­ploy­ment rate mea­sured 5.5 per cent in the fourth quar­ter of 2024, com­pared with 4.1 per cent in the same pe­ri­od of 2023.

Dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2024, the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate im­proved to 55.9 per cent from 55.5 per cent in the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter of 2023, as the labour force in­creased by 3,000 peo­ple.

“Ex­pan­sion in the labour force re­flect­ed a de­crease in the num­ber of em­ployed per­sons (5,400 per­sons), which co­in­cid­ed with an in­crease in the num­ber of per­sons with­out jobs and ac­tive­ly seek­ing em­ploy­ment (8,200 per­sons),” the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port al­so high­light­ed job loss­es and gains across var­i­ous sec­tors.

Job loss­es:

* Whole­sale & re­tail trade, restau­rants and ho­tels–5,300

* Man­u­fac­tur­ing (in­clud­ing min­ing and quar­ry­ing)–5,200

* Pe­tro­le­um and gas (pro­duc­tion, re­fin­ing, con­trac­tors)–3,900

* Trans­port, stor­age and com­mu­ni­ca­tion–500

Job gains:

* Fi­nance, in­sur­ance, re­al es­tate and busi­ness ser­vices–8,800

* Con­struc­tion (in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter)–5,100

* Com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial and per­son­al ser­vices–700

‘Dif­fi­cult times ahead’

Hen­ry said the sacked work­ers would face a dif­fi­cult road ahead if their is­sues are not ad­dressed. As it is, Hen­ry said, the crime sit­u­a­tion is be­com­ing chal­leng­ing, and signs of pover­ty are ev­i­dent.

“We have dif­fi­cult times ahead.”

At al­most every street cor­ner, he said, more peo­ple have been sell­ing bot­tled wa­ter, nuts, snacks, and cig­a­rettes. Oth­ers have been beg­ging to earn their keep.

“That is ev­i­dence of un­der­em­ploy­ment; there are peo­ple who are hurt­ing bad­ly. The with­draw­al from these pro­grammes would have fam­i­lies suf­fer­ing.”

The spin-off ef­fects from the ter­mi­na­tions, he said, could trig­ger a lot of so­cial is­sues, such as a rise in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, de­pres­sion, and stu­dents lash­ing out in schools.

Over the years, Hen­ry said, CEPEP work­ers nev­er re­ceived skills train­ing or had their ed­u­ca­tion up­grad­ed. To do that now would take time.

Hen­ry said Gov­ern­ment needs to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and find re­sources to re­store or re­or­gan­ise pro­grammes to deal with the prob­lem of struc­tur­al un­em­ploy­ment.

“One of the things we have to do is ex­pand our agri­cul­ture sec­tor and at­tempt to sat­is­fy more of our do­mes­tic re­quire­ments for food.”

Hen­ry said we need a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven and knowl­edge-based agri­cul­ture sec­tor to be com­pet­i­tive on the glob­al mar­ket.

“We don’t have a work­force that is gen­er­al­ly ca­pa­ble. We have a sit­u­a­tion where 30 to 40 per cent of our work­force are not equipped. They have not com­plet­ed sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion. We’re com­pet­ing with coun­tries where 50 per cent of the work­force, the 24 to 30 age group, are in post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.”

He said this group can’t be left be­hind be­cause we need a pro­duc­tive work­force.

An­oth­er prob­lem he cit­ed was the coun­try’s labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, which was be­yond 60 per cent be­fore the pan­dem­ic. The fig­ure is now in its 50s.

In the first quar­ter of 2025, the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate was 54.3 per cent.

“That means that ten per cent of the peo­ple who have been work­ing or look­ing for work have tech­ni­cal­ly with­drawn from the work­force. They are not reg­is­tered by the CSO as look­ing for work.”

Hen­ry posed the big­ger ques­tion: How are they sus­tain­ing them­selves if they are not look­ing for work?”

These peo­ple, he said, were ei­ther ob­tain­ing so­cial grants from Gov­ern­ment or beg­ging for hand­outs.

“Some of them who don’t feel that they want to beg, they ex­tract it. You know what I mean by ex­trac­tion, right?”

Hen­ry said some of these job­less work­ers may have al­ready “de­scend­ed in­to un­der­ground ac­tiv­i­ties”.

“We now have to spend a whole lot on se­cu­ri­ty. That is cost­ing our so­ci­ety. You have to be care­ful that you don’t get caught up in spend­ing mon­ey on pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty and that you don’t ad­dress the so­cial prob­lems. It’s bet­ter to spend mon­ey on up­grad­ing them than run­ning them down and putting them in prison.”

He said the present and past gov­ern­ments must face re­al­i­ty.

In­dus­tri­al con­sul­tant: Un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance pol­i­cy need­ed

Sabi­na Gomez, who re­tired as the chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the Labour Min­istry last year, won­dered how long these sacked work­ers could sur­vive.

Gomez, an in­dus­tri­al con­sul­tant, said Gov­ern­ment must act quick­ly to get them back on their feet. She feels the im­ple­men­ta­tion of com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes is a start.

Be­fore re­tir­ing, Gomez said the min­istry be­gan draft­ing an un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance pol­i­cy doc­u­ment for peo­ple who lose their jobs in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors. Fol­low­ing the pan­dem­ic, the pol­i­cy was pro­posed to es­tab­lish a fund sup­port­ed by con­tri­bu­tions from both work­ers and em­ploy­ers.

“So when some­thing like this hap­pens, the work­er has mon­ey to car­ry them over for six months so they would not be de­pen­dent on the State.”

She said oth­er coun­tries have im­ple­ment­ed this fund. Many peo­ple who lost their jobs dur­ing COVID-19, she said, have been un­able to find em­ploy­ment.

In the past, she said, Gov­ern­ment had to find mon­ey to help dis­placed work­ers.

Al­though the doc­u­ment was nev­er com­plet­ed, Gomez said it should still be ex­plored. Gomez said that, up un­til her re­tire­ment last year, the min­istry had not de­cid­ed who would ad­min­is­ter the fund.

She said work­ers who feel they have been un­fair­ly dis­missed are free to join a union to chal­lenge their ter­mi­na­tions or non-pay­ment of wages in court. Every year, an av­er­age of 1,000 dis­putes end up be­fore the court. A work­er has on­ly six months to file their dis­pute.

In the past, Gomez said, there were ma­jor re­trench­ments, cit­ing the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery as an ex­am­ple. “So I can’t say if these re­cent ter­mi­na­tions are the worst. But such ter­mi­na­tions af­fect every­one.”

Chair­man of the Em­ploy­er’s Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion Ke­ston Nan­coo said he wants to be­lieve Gov­ern­ment was car­ing and will ren­der as­sis­tance.

“I would ex­pect that the Gov­ern­ment, in its bud­get, would speak about how they are go­ing to close this gap.”

Nan­coo said those who lost their jobs have noth­ing to fall back on, as they come from the low­est end of the spec­trum.

“They are gen­uine­ly hurt­ing and in pain and not able to meet their ba­sic needs. What are we go­ing to do with all these peo­ple on the bread­line? It’s a source of con­cern.”

With Christ­mas around the cor­ner, Nan­coo said there would be no cheer, food and gifts in the homes of these work­ers. “It’s go­ing to be a bleak and gloomy Christ­mas for them.”

On Wednes­day, the Sun­day Guardian What­sApped a list of ques­tions to Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, which he read but did not re­spond to.

The min­istry’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ment al­so failed to re­spond to ques­tions that were emailed.

Job­less and hope­ful: Sin­gle par­ent looks to the bud­get for re­lief

For three years, Rhon­da Cud­joe man­aged her house­hold with a $2,400 month­ly salary she earned as a labour­er with Cepep. De­spite the small in­come, Cud­joe filled her cup­boards with ba­sic gro­cery sup­plies, sent her five chil­dren to school, paid her bills, and pur­chased truck-borne wa­ter every fort­night.

Now job­less, Cud­joe, 48, said the sit­u­a­tion has be­come dire and des­per­ate.

“It’s hard, re­al­ly hard, be­ing out of work, es­pe­cial­ly when you have chil­dren who de­pend on you to go to school,” said Cud­joe, a sin­gle par­ent.

She ad­mit­ted to feel­ing the pinch and pres­sure.

Cepep, she said, be­came her lifeblood in 2022 af­ter do­ing odds and ends.

“It wasn’t much, but at least it car­ried us through.”

Cud­joe left sec­ondary school at age 13 due to fam­i­ly is­sues. She re­gret­ted not at­tend­ing evening class­es to pur­sue her O-Lev­el ex­ams.

Liv­ing in a squat­ting set­tle­ment in San­gre Grande, Cud­joe strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed to pro­vide her chil­dren with an ed­u­ca­tion. Her hum­ble home has no elec­tric­i­ty and pipe-borne wa­ter.

“I al­ways tell my chil­dren not to give up on their ed­u­ca­tion, to go to school and learn. It’s the key to im­prov­ing our lives,” she said.

Two of her daugh­ters at­tend the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T. Her 17-year-old son and 12-year-old daugh­ter at­tend Matu­ra Sec­ondary School. Her last child is a pri­ma­ry school pupil.

Trans­porta­tion for the chil­dren, she said, hit her pock­et hard, but she would stretch her salary like elas­tic to make ends meet.

Now hard-pressed for cash, the chil­dren have not been at­tend­ing school reg­u­lar­ly.

“There are days when they would miss school, which I re­al­ly doh like. It’s both­er­some.”

Cud­joe is now un­able to buy truck-borne wa­ter.

“When the wa­ter run out, I would get from my moth­er next door.”

Due to lim­it­ed work ex­pe­ri­ence and a lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions, Cud­joe has not been for­tu­nate in se­cur­ing a job.

“I have been look­ing, search­ing ... Peo­ple are not hir­ing. There are no va­can­cies. Hon­est­ly, it’s tough.”

Re­cent­ly, a rel­a­tive hired Cud­joe for two days to rake up grass on a site. She earned $300. “It was just a lit­tle hus­tle.”

Cud­joe, who sup­port­ed the UNC in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, has her hopes hinged on the up­com­ing bud­get.

“To tell you the truth, that is what I am wait­ing on, to see what the Gov­ern­ment will do.”

Asked if she re­gret­ted vot­ing for the par­ty now in of­fice af­ter los­ing her job, Cud­joe said no.

“I have to get up and look for it (job), I can’t re­al­ly study that right now.”