Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) is warn­ing that Gov­ern­ment’s plan to de­ploy pris­on­ers sen­tenced to hard labour to main­tain pub­lic spaces must pri­ori­tise re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion rather than cre­ate a source of low-cost labour.

The warn­ing comes a week af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment in­tends to use in­mates to help clean com­mu­ni­ties, cut grass and main­tain pub­lic spaces as the Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces (NPUPS) is rolled out.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vis­it to NPUPS op­er­a­tions in Tu­na­puna last Tues­day, Alexan­der de­scribed the prison pop­u­la­tion as “the largest labour force in the na­tion” and said Gov­ern­ment was not mak­ing use of it.

“We are go­ing to rein­tro­duce where per­sons who have been charged and con­vict­ed by a court and sen­tenced to hard labour. We are go­ing to rein­tro­duce those per­sons to help... with the clean-up process,” he said.

Alexan­der al­so de­fend­ed the pro­pos­al as a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion mea­sure, ar­gu­ing that in­mates should have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate that they could con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to so­ci­ety.

NATUC, how­ev­er, said re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion must in­volve more than putting in­mates to work.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said prison work must be linked to ed­u­ca­tion, vo­ca­tion­al train­ing and na­tion­al­ly recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion can­not be­come a con­ve­nient source of cheap or sub­sti­tute labour at the ex­pense of un­em­ployed and dis­placed work­ers,” An­nisette said.

He said ac­tiv­i­ties such as clean­ing drains, cut­ting grass, clear­ing road­sides and main­tain­ing pub­lic spaces could con­sti­tute use­ful work, but ques­tioned what skills, qual­i­fi­ca­tions and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in­mates would leave prison with that they did not pos­sess be­fore.

NATUC is call­ing for lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy de­vel­op­ment, life-skills ed­u­ca­tion, oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty train­ing, vo­ca­tion­al in­struc­tion and na­tion­al­ly recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to form part of any such pro­gramme.

The labour body al­so warned that in­mate labour must not dis­place ex­ist­ing or un­em­ployed work­ers.

It cit­ed the dis­place­ment of more than 40,000 work­ers and said Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain how the ini­tia­tive aligns with its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate de­cent em­ploy­ment for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

“The re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of one group in so­ci­ety must not be achieved through the eco­nom­ic dis­place­ment of an­oth­er,” An­nisette said.

NATUC said it would op­pose any arrange­ment in which in­mate labour is used to elim­i­nate es­tab­lished jobs, sup­press wages, un­der­mine col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, avoid hir­ing work­ers or re­place de­cent em­ploy­ment with un­paid or low-cost labour.

The union body is al­so call­ing for risk as­sess­ments, trained su­per­vi­sion, oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty pro­ce­dures, and con­sul­ta­tion with or­gan­ised labour, em­ploy­ers and cor­rec­tion­al au­thor­i­ties be­fore the pro­gramme be­gins.

“Our po­si­tion is sim­ple: Train the in­mate. Cer­ti­fy the skill. Pre­pare the in­di­vid­ual for law­ful em­ploy­ment. Pro­tect the work­er. Pre­serve de­cent jobs,” An­nisette said.