Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle yes­ter­day called on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment to “stop wag­ing war” on vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple with mass ter­mi­na­tions in State agen­cies, not­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion has cre­at­ed a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in T&T.

“It’s now a sin to have been hired by the PNM be­tween 2015-2025, or to live in a PNM con­stituen­cy. It’s a sin to look like PNM or sound like a PNM!” he said.

Mar­celle made these com­ments in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in pi­lot­ing de­bate on his mo­tion call­ing for Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide so­cial re­lief mea­sures for the so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, fol­low­ing mass ter­mi­na­tions and non-re­new­al of con­tracts across pub­lic bod­ies.

Mar­celle said this re­sult­ed in un­em­ploy­ment in­creas­es in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, caus­ing a myr­i­ad of neg­a­tive so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pacts.

Mar­celle said he draft­ed the mo­tion in the name of the late Richard Coop­er, of San Fer­nan­do, and the thou­sands of vul­ner­a­ble Laven­tille West fam­i­lies and oth­ers through­out T&T af­fect­ed by the UNC’s hard de­ci­sions.

Mar­celle claimed Coop­er died by sui­cide af­ter he and his wife lost their Re­for­esta­tion Pro­gramme jobs. How­ev­er, he gave no in­for­ma­tion to sup­port this claim.

He said the Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­sults were an in­di­ca­tion that a lot of PN­Mites ei­ther stayed home or vot­ed for the UNC.

“While the UNC in Op­po­si­tion promised 50,000 new jobs, nine months af­ter win­ning of­fice, the new Gov­ern­ment put more than 50,000 peo­ple out of jobs,” he said.

“Af­ter the-then Op­po­si­tion Leader cam­paigned on ‘love, com­pas­sion and moth­er­ly care’ and they boast­ed how PNM peo­ple run away and came to UNC’s ‘lov­ing arms,’ it’s now com­plete war on the most vul­ner­a­ble and the same PNM peo­ple!”

“I’ve nev­er wit­nessed a po­lit­i­cal par­ty gov­ern by fear, in­tim­i­da­tion, vin­dic­tive­ness, hate and pure evil­ness...this ma­chin­ery of in­jus­tice called the UNC Gov­ern­ment!” Mar­celle said, not­ing con­tracts are be­ing end­ed dai­ly in State bod­ies.

He con­demned UNC MP Clyde El­der for the re­marks El­der made as Mar­celle spoke about one of his job­less con­stituents. He said the PNM un­der­stood the pub­lic ser­vice’s de­fi­cien­cies in fill­ing va­can­cies. De­tail­ing how job­less­ness af­fect­ed busi­ness, Mar­celle said peo­ple couldn’t meet the re­quire­ments of the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cruit­ment pro­gramme—and even so­cial work­ers were not avail­able to as­sist those who need­ed state help.