Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said one of the main aims of her plans to put the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) un­der three min­istries, with the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter as the chief dis­burs­er of mon­ey, was to weed out cor­rup­tion. The PM said that would en­sure bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing of the pro­gramme and the weed­ing-out of el­e­ments, like ghost gangs, that led to cor­rup­tion. She was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the launch of Gov­ern­ment's na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty cam­paign at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

"I thought long and hard and came up with an idea to sep­a­rate the URP in­to sev­er­al min­istries to have greater con­trol and greater mon­i­tor­ing over it. It is a very large progamme," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The URP will be sep­a­rat­ed in­to three units un­der the Min­istries of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. "The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter will be the ac­count­ing arm for the dis­burse­ment of monies to the three min­istries," the PM said.

Fur­ther, the low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of URP work­ers and the fact that they seem to ben­e­fit lit­tle from the pro­gramme were oth­er rea­sons for her de­ci­sion to sep­a­rate it, she added. She said un­der the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry URP work­ers would get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn a skill so they would not have to de­pend on the pro­gramme for the rest of their lives.