DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The gov­ern­ment is set to spend just over $5 mil­lion on short-term con­tract­ed work­ers un­der the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces Pro­gramme, as prepa­ra­tions for Car­ni­val 2026 in­ten­si­fy, with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of both new and ex­ist­ing mu­nic­i­pal work­ers now un­der close scruti­ny.

The dis­clo­sure was made by Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence. She said the spe­cial Car­ni­val phase of the na­tion­al up­keep pro­gramme be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 2 and will run un­til Feb­ru­ary 28.

Cab­i­net ap­proved $5,363,520 to fund the one-month ini­tia­tive, which will see more than 1,000 work­ers hired on short-term con­tracts. The work­force will be or­gan­ised in­to 86 teams of 12 peo­ple, de­ployed across mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions for four-week as­sign­ments.

Ameen said the gov­ern­ment will as­sess whether the pro­gramme should con­tin­ue be­yond Car­ni­val, and in what form. While ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­por­tance of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er, she not­ed that long-stand­ing con­cerns about work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with­in mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions are now be­ing ad­dressed more di­rect­ly.

“Be­cause there are peo­ple who need em­ploy­ment, there is a need for more work­ers on the ground. But there is al­so an is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with the cur­rent work­ers in the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions that every sin­gle mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion faces. We’ll con­tin­ue to talk to the unions about pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while we work with these tem­po­rary work­ers,” Ameen said.

The Car­ni­val project builds on a pi­lot ini­tia­tive launched on De­cem­ber 15, which is sched­uled to end on March 15. The pi­lot has al­lowed the gov­ern­ment to iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in the sys­tem and pro­pose im­prove­ments.

Fol­low­ing the dis­band­ment of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme last year, Ameen said an un­em­ploy­ment fund was cre­at­ed with­in the Min­istry of Fi­nance to chan­nel fund­ing to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and strength­en their work­force.

“The pi­lot project has al­lowed us to work out some ad­min­is­tra­tive kinks, make rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ment, and we have had meet­ings with all 14 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties for them to make rec­om­men­da­tions, which will go back to Cab­i­net,” she said.

While the hir­ing of tem­po­rary work­ers for Car­ni­val is not new, Ameen said this year’s work­ers are be­ing hired di­rect­ly by her min­istry and then as­signed to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions—a move she said will re­duce costs for lo­cal au­thor­i­ties. She con­firmed that coun­cil­lors, al­der­men, and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment rec­om­mend­ed in­di­vid­u­als for em­ploy­ment but stressed that per­for­mance ex­pec­ta­tions are high.

“One of the things we have ob­served is that these new work­ers are very pro­duc­tive, and the is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for all mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions is un­der a bit of a mi­cro­scope now. This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for all of them to prove them­selves,” Ameen said.

The tem­po­rary work­force will be re­spon­si­ble for clean­ing and main­tain­ing venues used for Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing pa­rade routes, beach­es, recre­ation­al grounds, and spaces used for non-mas­querad­ing events such as youth and re­li­gious camps.

Ameen said she met with all 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to as­sess their spe­cif­ic needs and held dis­cus­sions with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and the Min­istry of Cul­ture. She not­ed that the NCC has 18 re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives, who will work di­rect­ly with cor­re­spond­ing cor­po­ra­tions to sup­port Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties not on­ly in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, and Ch­agua­nas, but al­so in rur­al and re­gion­al ar­eas.

Work­ers were as­signed based on each cor­po­ra­tion’s iden­ti­fied needs, with ad­just­ments made where ad­di­tion­al gaps were not­ed.

“In fact, when I met with some of those cor­po­ra­tions, they re­quest­ed a spe­cif­ic num­ber of em­ploy­ees. In some cas­es, we iden­ti­fied oth­er needs they had not con­sid­ered, and there­fore we in­creased the num­ber based on what they had orig­i­nal­ly re­quest­ed,” Ameen said.

An op­er­a­tions man­ag­er has been ap­point­ed to act as a li­ai­son be­tween the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, Min­istry of Cul­ture, NCC, and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

Ameen con­firmed that cleanup work has al­ready be­gun, with Tyri­co Beach cleared and main­te­nance un­der­way at sites used for stick­fight­ing and ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions, as well as recre­ation­al grounds, all un­der the di­rec­tion of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.