Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan says un­der his watch ghost gangs have al­most com­plete­ly been elim­i­nat­ed from the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and he is go­ing to per­son­al­ly seek out any ex­ist­ing ghost gangs to re­move them.Ram­bachan made the state­ment on Tues­day night at the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, High Street, Princes Town, as he ad­dressed the min­istry's eighth con­sul­ta­tion on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form.

His state­ment was trig­gered by a call from a mem­ber of the au­di­ence for the im­prove­ment of wages of URP work­ers.Ram­bachan launched a tirade as he re­spond­ed to the call. Gov­ern­ment, he said, spent $389 mil­lion a year on URP and the coun­try de­served val­ue for mon­ey.He said URP work­ers were paid $17.25 an hour which was above min­i­mum wage and they did not work a full eight hours.

"Too many peo­ple in this coun­try sim­ply want to work four hours or no hours a day and get paid. I think as a min­is­ter that is wrong and as Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter I am not go­ing to sub­scribe to that what­so­ev­er," Ram­bachan said.He said URP work­ers were ex­pect­ed to work four hours a day and un­der the URP "a num­ber of them are not even work­ing four hours a day."

The min­is­ter said eval­u­a­tion of­fi­cers were dis­patched to mon­i­tor whether peo­ple were work­ing or not and those found not work­ing, "we have start­ed to deduct wages from the URP work­ers."Ram­bachan said he had tak­en on a role of "man­ag­er" at his min­istry and "there are a lot of peo­ple who thought they could ghost gang un­der this min­is­ter."

How­ev­er, he added: "You are not go­ing to ghost gang un­der this min­is­ter. I am go­ing to seek out peo­ple who are ghost-gang­ing and get rid of ghost gangs and give peo­ple who want to work."He said Gov­ern­ment want­ed URP work­ers to be able to move away from the pro­gramme and get bet­ter jobs. Ram­bachan point­ed to a re­cent state­ment from fast food gi­ant KFC which stat­ed that it had 600 va­can­cies."They can­not get peo­ple to work," he said.

Many of the con­trib­u­tors at the con­sul­ta­tions sug­gest­ed that coun­cil­lors be made per­ma­nent po­si­tions with fixed salaries since be­ing a coun­cil­lor was a 24/7 job.Res­i­dents al­so plead­ed for Ram­bachan to ad­dress the is­sue of land­slips and poor road con­di­tions in the Princes Town re­gion.

He an­nounced that 45 roads in the re­gion would paved at a cost of $13.5 mil­lion and $7.5 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed for land­slip re­pairs. Ram­bachan said 31 new pavil­ions would be built in the re­gion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said, 45 URP projects were un­der­way.