Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

One hun­dred and fifty-eight dai­ly-paid work­ers are ex­pect­ed to be pro­mot­ed to per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment with­in the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and So­cial Pro­tec­tion.

The an­nounce­ment was made on Thurs­day by the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary (OCS) fol­low­ing an agree­ment with the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW).

The OCS said the de­vel­op­ment was a ma­jor step to­ward strength­en­ing job se­cu­ri­ty for el­i­gi­ble work­ers, paving the way for work­ers to move from the reg­u­lar list to the per­ma­nent list. It said this al­so strength­ens su­per­vi­sion and de­ploy­ment of dai­ly-paid work­ers, builds a fair­er se­nior­i­ty struc­ture, re­duces pro­longed stag­na­tion in pro­mo­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, and sup­ports bet­ter work­force and suc­ces­sion plan­ning.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Ack­el Franklyn was ex­cit­ed about the ini­tia­tive and the op­por­tu­ni­ties it pre­sent­ed for staff.

He said the tran­si­tion from reg­u­lar work­ers to­wards the per­ma­nent list would have a domi­no ef­fect, cre­at­ing va­can­cies in the reg­u­lar list and the ca­su­al list.

“It would al­low them to en­joy greater ben­e­fits from the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, em­bassies and so forth. That lit­tle change in word­ing has a lot of mean­ing. Per­ma­nent ver­sus reg­u­lar on a job let­ter has a sig­nif­i­cant val­ue. The abil­i­ty to bor­row, get visas and those things would now be in bet­ter stead,” he said.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and oth­er se­nior mem­bers of staff were present for the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny along­side NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Skeete and oth­er of­fi­cials.

Dur­ing last month’s bud­get de­bate, Au­gus­tine said the THA is con­tem­plat­ing a hir­ing freeze in the fu­ture as its hefty pay­roll was stymieing de­vel­op­ment.

How­ev­er, he said there are sev­er­al va­can­cies with­in var­i­ous di­vi­sions that need to be ad­dressed be­fore any freeze could be con­sid­ered.