Carisa Lee Re­porter

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS) has tem­porar­i­ly with­drawn its an­nu­al sub­ven­tion from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety (TTRCS).

The min­istry stat­ed both par­ties agreed the $730,000 grant would be pro­vid­ed to the NGO, con­tin­gent up­on its ad­her­ence to the guide­lines, which the MS­DFS de­ter­mined it has failed to meet.

The move was made by the min­istry af­ter a sto­ry was pub­lished in the Trinidad Guardian on Oc­to­ber 18, in which work­ers anony­mous­ly spoke out about a “tox­ic” work en­vi­ron­ment at the TTRCS.

Ear­li­er that same month, fly­ers call­ing for the re­moval of pres­i­dent Jill De Bourg were plas­tered around the Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, Port-of-Spain com­pound. Print­ed on them were rea­sons why she should step down.

“We had giv­en you a chance to be our TTRCS pres­i­dent to bring bet­ter­ment to the so­ci­ety, not to bring it apart,” it read. Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the TTRCS is not cur­rent­ly in com­pli­ance with  the fi­nan­cial con­di­tions and will not be el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive the sub­ven­tion un­til that is achieved.

The min­istry said, how­ev­er, it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“While the min­istry is not in­volved in the dai­ly man­age­ment of the sub­vent­ed NGOs un­der its purview, there is an ex­pec­ta­tion of the ap­pli­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ples of mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty, and equal­i­ty with­in these en­vi­ron­ments. Me­di­a­tion of is­sues can be a vi­able op­tion in ad­dress­ing work­place chal­lenges and has proven suc­cess­ful in the past, where the min­istry would have re­ferred oth­er NGOs to me­di­a­tion.,” the email read.

The min­istry made it clear that the late pay­ment of salaries to staff has no re­la­tion to the gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion to the TTRCS.

For­mer em­ploy­ees claimed in­fringe­ment of per­son­al time, late salary pay­ments, and lack of mid­dle man­age­ment were among the is­sues af­fect­ing them. They al­leged that De Bourg had blurred the work-life bound­aries and con­tact­ed em­ploy­ees dur­ing va­ca­tion leave and af­ter work­ing hours.

De Bourg, who be­gan her tenure as pres­i­dent in Au­gust 2018, de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as un­for­tu­nate and de­nied the al­le­ga­tions in the Oc­to­ber 18 news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, but she ad­mit­ted salaries are some­times paid late and that she con­tacts staff out­side of work­ing hours but on­ly when nec­es­sary.

Guardian Me­dia sent the for­mer em­ploy­ees’ claims to the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent So­ci­eties (IFRC) in Gene­va, Switzer­land, and they said there was an In­tegri­ty Line de­signed to con­duct fact-find­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions while pro­tect­ing the com­plainants’ anonymi­ty from ini­ti­a­tion to con­clu­sion of a case.

“We en­cour­age staff and vol­un­teers to con­tact the In­tegri­ty Line when­ev­er they ex­pe­ri­ence or wit­ness a prac­tice or be­hav­iour that war­rants it and to chan­nel their com­plaints through the rel­e­vant in­sti­tu­tions in their coun­try,” she said.

How­ev­er, the IFRC said it has no statu­to­ry right to in­ter­fere in Na­tion­al So­ci­ety em­ploy­ee re­la­tions is­sues and said it re­mains avail­able to its mem­ber­ship to pro­vide ad­vice and sup­port to help ad­dress struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional is­sues.

In Ju­ly 2023, 20 em­ploy­ees from the Red Cross and the Port Au­thor­i­ty in To­ba­go were quar­an­tined. In an ar­ti­cle post­ed to the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) web­site, Red Cross work­ers at the port ex­pressed that since the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, their salaries had been dras­ti­cal­ly cut.

They stat­ed that they were un­cer­tain about their pay­ment  sta­tus and whether they need­ed to be placed un­der quar­an­tine.

A for­mer em­ploy­ee was op­ti­mistic that the IFRC would have to look in­to their com­plaints now.

Two oth­er work­ers ques­tioned the length of Bourg’s term as pres­i­dent and said a term should be three years. They said De Bourg’s term should have end­ed in 2021.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to De Bourg for a com­ment yes­ter­day, but she de­clined.