RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Twen­ty-one months af­ter the Gov­ern­ment gave an as­sur­ance that the Mil­i­tary-Led Youth Pro­gramme of Ap­pren­tice­ship and Re­ori­en­ta­tion Train­ing (MY­PART) ini­tia­tive was not in jeop­ardy, ques­tions have again arisen about its fu­ture, af­ter ter­mi­na­tion no­tices were al­leged­ly giv­en to staff mem­bers, end­ing their re­spec­tive con­tracts this month end.

In De­cem­ber 2020, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that the pro­gramme was be­ing dis­man­tled and the 22 cadets en­rolled at the time had feared that they wouldn’t be al­lowed to com­plete the pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, on De­cem­ber 30, 2020, the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices, via a me­dia re­lease, ad­vised that the pro­gramme, a three-year res­i­den­tial pro­gramme, was on­ly sus­pend­ed due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

It added that the pro­gramme was not dis­man­tled and stat­ed that $7.2 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to­wards it, which the min­istry claimed was tes­ti­mo­ny of the “Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue the pro­gramme.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was con­tact­ed by a MY­PART staffer who claimed their con­tracts were be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed and no as­sur­ance had been giv­en as to if they would be re­newed or if they would now be ab­sorbed un­der the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) pro­gramme, un­der which the MY­PART ini­tia­tive was placed af­ter its trans­for­ma­tion in 2020, where 17 mem­bers of staff were ter­mi­nat­ed.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia un­der strict anonymi­ty, a MY­PART staffer said from the 17 mem­bers of staff who were sent home in De­cem­ber 2020, four of them were giv­en re­newed con­tracts to con­tin­ue work­ing in the pro­gramme.

“MY­PART is now un­der the CCC and right now we are not sure what is hap­pen­ing with us. They told us via a let­ter that our con­tracts will end Au­gust month-end. No fur­ther con­tracts will be giv­en out from what we un­der­stand and no one said any­thing more than that let­ter we can’t con­test,” the MY­PART staffer said.

“They had no re­spect to tell us what was hap­pen­ing. It just said our con­tract was end­ed. It was a three-months con­tract and by the 31st of Au­gust we will have our last pay. We are not sure if CCC will call us or if it means we will be out of a job, mean­ing that we will have to find an­oth­er. We were al­ready re­duced from 17 to four and jobs are hard to get now.”

The staffer ex­plained that MY­PART was the on­ly res­i­den­tial-based pro­gramme and dis­closed that since it was “trans­formed” and placed un­der the CCC, they had lost their “home” and every­thing with it, in­clud­ing its dor­mi­to­ries.

“It’s a shame how things was han­dled and as far as I am see­ing, there is no MY­PART in the fu­ture. They have no re­spect to say that they no longer need our ser­vices but just left us hang­ing again, sec­ond time around,” the staffer lament­ed.

Back in De­cem­ber, 2020, the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices said the MY­PART pro­gramme had been trans­ferred from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) to its port­fo­lio, with em­ploy­ees whose con­tracts were due to ex­pire on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020. The min­istry said then that the ex­pi­ra­tion of a con­tract was not a ter­mi­na­tion but was in ac­cor­dance with the agree­ment be­tween both par­ties.

The min­istry had giv­en the as­sur­ance then that it had been in con­tact with the pro­gramme man­agers to “de­ter­mine a way for­ward for the com­ple­tion of the cur­rent co­hort, giv­en the pro­to­cols and stip­u­la­tions out­lined by the Min­istry of Health for gath­er­ing of per­sons in con­fined spaces.”

Ques­tions sent to the line min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings on the is­sue went unan­swered up to press time last night.