At least 200 jobs tied to the Change Man­age­ment Unit of the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry are un­der re­view.

Con­fir­ma­tion came from Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, who said yes­ter­day that sev­er­al ini­tia­tives un­der her min­istry are be­ing looked at cur­rent­ly.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the con­tracts of the work­ers as­signed to the change man­age­ment unit will come to an end at the close of June.

The work­ers were hired specif­i­cal­ly to tack­le the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form ini­tia­tive un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PMN) ad­min­is­tra­tion, but now they are un­cer­tain what will hap­pen to their jobs.

Fol­low­ing an in­tro­duc­to­ry meet­ing at the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day, Ameen said, “At the min­istry, there are a num­ber of ini­tia­tives that we will re­view and where we have need to re­pur­pose things, we will re­pur­pose. Where there’s need for con­ti­nu­ity, you will see con­ti­nu­ity. And of course, those things, we will not be do­ing them in any vie-ki-vie man­ner. We’ll be care­ful­ly as­sess­ing and de­ter­min­ing what we go for­ward with.”

When asked if the change man­age­ment unit will be dis­band­ed, she replied, “There are a num­ber of units that would have been ini­ti­at­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment and with the change of gov­ern­ments,  there are al­ways changes in poli­cies and pro­grammes, and as we go for­ward, we will re­view and up­date you.”

Ameen al­so re­vealed Gov­ern­ment has no plans to con­tin­ue the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form ef­forts.

How­ev­er, she does be­lieve a lot can be done to strength­en lo­cal gov­ern­ment that does not re­quire leg­isla­tive change.

“So for in­stance, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions have been ask­ing for more re­sources and re­sources doesn’t mean mon­ey on­ly. It is ad­di­tion­al mon­ey,  but al­so ad­di­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al per­sons such as en­gi­neers, cor­po­rate sec­re­taries, fi­nan­cial ad­vis­ers, and med­ical doc­tors, to have suf­fi­cient equip­ment to do the work that they are re­quired to do. But, al­so train­ing for those who are in-house and this will strength­en their ca­pac­i­ty.”

Ameen, mean­while, said she was com­mit­ted to work­ing with all cor­po­ra­tions to max­imise what­ev­er is al­lo­cat­ed to them.

She added, “When you have a bud­get be­ing ap­proved and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are not get­ting the al­lo­ca­tions they are promised in the bud­get, this un­der­mines the work that they plan to do. It is my in­ten­tion to work with them to max­imise what­ev­er is al­lo­cat­ed to them and then to strength­en them in dif­fer­ent ways.”

Ef­forts to con­tact for­mer Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi were fu­tile yes­ter­day.