The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment has ap­point­ed Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress na­tion­al cam­paign man­ag­er Feeroze Khan as the new pro­gramme man­ag­er of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

Khan met yes­ter­day with Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Mitchell, one day af­ter Ameen dis­closed de­tails of al­leged wide­spread cor­rup­tion in the pro­gramme un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In a state­ment on Sun­day, the min­is­ter claimed that more than $231 mil­lion of the URP’s $300 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the fis­cal year had al­ready been drawn down, with on­ly $2 mil­lion spent on goods and ser­vices.

She said the ma­jor­i­ty went to salaries, in­clud­ing pay­ments to peo­ple who did not work or were liv­ing abroad.

Ameen al­so al­leged that po­lit­i­cal in­sid­ers had been op­er­at­ing “ghost gangs”, sub­mit­ting names for pay­ment while col­lect­ing por­tions of the salaries them­selves.

She said more than 500 URP work groups orig­i­nal­ly as­signed to To­ba­go were qui­et­ly shift­ed to mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies along the East-West Cor­ri­dor ahead of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

On Mon­day, Ameen dis­missed crit­i­cism from for­mer PNM min­is­ters, say­ing she would not be dis­tract­ed by “pro­pa­gan­da and lies from those who helped cre­ate the mess we are now clean­ing up”.

She con­firmed that re­ports will be sub­mit­ted to the TTPS and the Fraud Squad, and said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to re­store ac­count­abil­i­ty and de­liv­er mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment through the URP.

The min­istry has not yet out­lined Khan’s man­date or the scope of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the new role.