KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Just three days af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led Coali­tion of In­ter­ests won the elec­tion, in­terns un­der the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) In­tern­ship Pro­gramme stormed the cor­po­ra­tion’s Mon Re­pos of­fice in San Fer­nan­do, de­mand­ing im­me­di­ate pay­ment of out­stand­ing wages.

The protest, cap­tured in videos that spread wide­ly across so­cial me­dia, showed the work­ers con­fronting a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on Thurs­day and re­fus­ing to leave the com­pound. One woman was heard shout­ing, “Don’t come and tell us noth­ing. We want our mon­ey right now.” When se­cu­ri­ty ad­vised them to move their demon­stra­tion to the road­way, the work­ers de­fi­ant­ly chant­ed, “We want we cash. Call the po­lice!” An­oth­er pro­test­er told the of­fi­cer to go to MTS and call the au­thor­i­ties.

Frus­trat­ed and an­gry, the work­ers claimed the in­tern­ship pro­gramme was sud­den­ly cut af­ter the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lost the elec­tion, and they ac­cused San Fer­nan­do East MP and out­go­ing min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning of us­ing the pro­gramme for po­lit­i­cal mileage.

“Al­lyuh can­not lock off a con­tract and peo­ple ain’t get paid,” one woman said. “Bri­an, we know you do this for votes, but the peo­ple are fed up with op­pres­sion.” “They are fed up with the PNM,” an­oth­er shout­ed.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Man­ning called on the HDC and the new gov­ern­ment not to vic­timise San Fer­nan­do East res­i­dents for their sup­port of the PNM in the elec­tion held on Mon­day.

“I would ask the good peo­ple at the HDC, and this new gov­ern­ment, to not vic­timise the good peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do East for elec­toral­ly ex­press­ing their sup­port for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. All con­tracts en­tered in­to in good faith should be ho­n­oured, re­spect­ed and ful­filled. Per­sons who would have com­plet­ed an hon­est day’s work on be­half of the HDC should not be treat­ed in such a dis­re­spect­ful man­ner. As MP for San Fer­nan­do East, I de­mand that these work­ers are paid now what they were promised and have cer­tain­ly earned,” Man­ning wrote.

How­ev­er, an HDC of­fi­cial de­nied that the pro­gramme was dis­con­tin­ued and said it re­mains ac­tive. Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, who asked not to be named, in­terns were brought in on a stag­gered ba­sis, and as such, pay­ments are be­ing made in phas­es based on in­di­vid­ual start dates.

The of­fi­cial said some in­terns have al­ready been paid, and oth­ers will be paid soon.

In a state­ment re­leased on Thurs­day, the HDC ac­knowl­edged that some in­terns had raised con­cerns over de­lays in re­ceiv­ing their stipends. The cor­po­ra­tion said the de­lays stemmed from ad­min­is­tra­tive and lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges, such as in­cor­rect or miss­ing bank­ing de­tails, in­ac­tive ac­counts, and mis­match­es be­tween names on in­tern records and bank ac­counts. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in­terns be­gan work at dif­fer­ent times, and the pay­roll re­flects these vary­ing start dates and du­ra­tions.

To help re­solve the sit­u­a­tion, the HDC said it has es­tab­lished a ded­i­cat­ed li­ai­son point at its San Fer­nan­do Of­fice on Mac Gill­vary Street. There, in­terns can con­firm their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, raise queries, and re­ceive as­sis­tance in per­son.

The In­tern­ship to Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme is one of the HDC’s ini­tia­tives aimed at pro­vid­ing ter­tiary-lev­el stu­dents with prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the hous­ing sec­tor. The pro­gramme runs for ten weeks.