SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Shiv­an­na Sam says al­le­ga­tions against her­self made by two for­mer em­ploy­ees at her con­stituen­cy of­fice are false and un­true.

Last week, two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers/ac­tivists, Bri­an Pierre and Samuel Pacheco, told Guardian Me­dia they were fired as field of­fi­cers from her con­stituen­cy and claimed they were side­lined, ex­ploit­ed, dis­crim­i­nat­ed against and mar­gin­alised be­cause of their race.

Pierre and Pacheco were ter­mi­nat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 23 by Sam, who serves as a Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

“I thought when the UNC wins, every­body wins, but we lose,” Pacheco said dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian last Tues­day.

“It was hurt­ful, and I was in dis­be­lief. I feel re­al­ly heart­bro­ken. I feel be­trayed… sup­port­ing some­body and giv­ing them my full 100 per cent and ex­pect­ing bet­ter from them. But we get the worst.”

Pierre al­so stat­ed he felt be­trayed.

In the last five months, thou­sands have lost their jobs from en­ti­ties in­clud­ing the CEPEP, URP, Forestry Di­vi­sion, WASA, re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty and Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led gov­ern­ment.

De­spite their dis­missals, the men said they would still sup­port the UNC be­cause of the par­ty’s leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whom they love, ad­mire and have full con­fi­dence in.

Since 2019, Pierre and Pacheco have been die-hard UNC sup­port­ers. They cam­paigned for the par­ty in three elec­tions, the last be­ing with Sam, who won her seat in the April 28th Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Dis­en­chant­ed by what they claimed were un­fair dis­missals, the men vowed to file a re­port with the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion to get re­dress.

No con­tracts

To date, Pierre said he has not re­ceived a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion for why he was fired. Hired on May 27, the men claimed they nev­er re­ceived or signed con­tracts.

They were giv­en a let­ter dat­ed June 10, 2025, signed by Sam, which con­firmed that they worked in her of­fice as field of­fi­cers for a month­ly salary of $4,000 each.

Af­ter NIS and health sur­charge de­duc­tions, their take-home salary was $3,818.

The men were rec­om­mend­ed for the jobs by San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip and San­gre Grande South coun­cil­lor Calvin Seecha­ran.

They claimed Sam promised to pro­vide them with trans­port to vis­it sites plagued by is­sues.

In­stead, they had to fork out mon­ey from their pock­ets to vis­it these sites, which they claimed Sam nev­er ad­dressed.

At times, they claimed they walked to the sites when they could not af­ford taxi fares.

“The soles of our shoes start­ed to wear down and fall apart. We told them we had no mon­ey to vis­it the sites,” Pierre said.

Their com­plaints, they said, fell on deaf ears.

Pierre and Pacheco said they were ac­cused of do­ing what they want­ed. To com­pound mat­ters, they said they nev­er felt com­fort­able work­ing in the of­fice.

Twice, Pacheco, 23, said he was put in an awk­ward po­si­tion when an of­fice work­er made deroga­to­ry re­marks about his race.

The first was when Pacheco was seat­ed in the work­er’s car. He al­leged he heard him make a racist state­ment against an African dri­ver who did not al­low him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to dri­ve out of the of­fice’s com­pound.

Feel­ing of­fend­ed, Pacheco said he told the work­er about his re­marks, but he just laughed.

“He said it wasn’t se­ri­ous. But it was se­ri­ous to me be­cause them kind of state­ment wasn’t very nice.

“I al­ways feel like we were walk­ing on eggshells. I feel like we were al­ways on the edge. As aun­ty Kam­la say…we’re try­ing to bring the coun­try to­geth­er and we were feel­ing sep­a­rat­ed.”

Of­fice Dis­crim­i­na­tion

Pierre, 33, said he too ex­pe­ri­enced an un­com­fort­able en­counter.

In the of­fice, the men claimed that the East In­di­an staff mem­bers had more priv­i­leges than they did. Pierre said they were not al­lowed to use cer­tain things in the of­fice, such as the com­put­ers. They were al­so ex­clud­ed from of­fice meet­ings.

Af­ter win­ning her seat, Pacheco said Sam dis­trib­uted ham­pers to her staff as to­kens of ap­pre­ci­a­tion but they were ex­clud­ed.

Pierre said every­one in the of­fice al­so knew they were go­ing to be fired ex­cept them.

On the day they were sent home, the men said Sam told them the staff could not work with them, but did not men­tion who the staff mem­bers were when they en­quired.

“She said we can’t work in this en­vi­ron­ment,” Pierre said.

They were al­so in­formed that they were not do­ing their work prop­er­ly.

The men said Sam al­so had an is­sue with them at­tend­ing the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent Sports Day in Port-of-Spain.

Pacheco said he ap­plied for a day off, while Pierre said he at­tend­ed the event af­ter the of­fice was closed due to a pow­er out­age.

“To be re­al, the MP had prob­lems with the peo­ple we were mov­ing with. She told us we were seen with char­ac­ters. But when we asked her who the char­ac­ters were, she did not re­spond,” Pierre said.

Asked if they ever found them­selves on the wrong side of the law, the men said they nev­er in­dulged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Where we come from… it have a stig­ma, so we were just try­ing to show a dif­fer­ent side…a pos­i­tive way about we. This job was a step­ping stone for us…we were work­ing to­wards build­ing a fu­ture.”

Pierre and Pacheco said they spent weeks cam­paign­ing with Sam to help her win her seat.

“We were the first to reach the cam­paign of­fice and the last to leave at night. There were times we had no mon­ey to trav­el home.” The men said they vol­un­teered their ser­vices to the UNC on­ly to face dis­ap­point­ment.

Pacheco said he left his full-time job at a liquor store to cam­paign for the par­ty.

When he land­ed the job, Pacheco said his fam­i­ly felt proud.

Now job­less, Pierre said he would not be able to pay for the fur­ni­ture he took out on hire pur­chase, and the store would now have to re­pos­sess the items.

MP re­sponds

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Ken­wyn Phillip, he de­clined to com­ment.

But San­gre Grande South coun­cil­lor Calvin Seecha­ran vouched for the men.

“These boys have been loy­al sup­port­ers of the UNC over the years. When­ev­er dis­as­ter hits the re­gion, they are al­ways present to as­sist, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing flood­ing. With ref­er­ence to their fir­ings, all ques­tions should be asked to Mrs Sam.”

On Wednes­day, Guardian Me­dia sent a What­sApp mes­sage to Sam out­lin­ing the con­cerns Pacheco and Pierre had raised. A list of ques­tions was al­so for­ward­ed to her.

In re­sponse, Sam said, “The claims are to­tal­ly and com­plete­ly un­true. I have made as­sess­ments of my staff, as I am en­ti­tled to do as the MP, for a prop­er func­tion­ing of­fice to ser­vice my con­stituents.”