The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter re­mains tight-lipped on whether there are on­go­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and its re­cent­ly fired em­ploy­ees. How­ev­er, his min­istry sought to make it clear that none of the 28 ter­mi­nat­ed em­ploy­ees had been re­hired.

Amid claims that sev­er­al SSA of­fi­cers who were fired be­tween April and May have been called to be re-in­ter­viewed at the agency, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry put out a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ing, “No ter­mi­nat­ed for­mer em­ploy­ee has been re­hired by the SSA.”

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters hours lat­er in Port-of-Spain Hinds said, “So this busi­ness of re­hir­ing and all of that is not on. It is not cor­rect, and I think the state­ment is­sued by the SSA di­rec­tor on be­half of the agency would have clar­i­fied that.”

But Guardian Me­dia sought to clar­i­fy whether the SSA is speak­ing with those for­mer em­ploy­ees to come to a mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing in­stead of lit­i­ga­tion, as it has been re­vealed that some of those em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing for­mer head Roger Best, are seek­ing le­gal coun­sel.

Yes­ter­day, when Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed on those claims, it could not con­firm whether those al­leged talks were to be re-in­ter­viewed to be re-em­ployed, re-in­ter­viewed be­cause of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, or to ne­go­ti­ate their ex­it pack­ages in­stead of le­gal chal­lenges.

At the me­dia brief­ing, Hinds was asked, “Are any mem­bers of the SSA in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with those for­mer fired em­ploy­ees at this time?”

Hinds re­spond­ed curt­ly, “I am not in a po­si­tion to know that.” He was then asked, “Are lawyers in­volved? Are they ne­go­ti­at­ing with those for­mer em­ploy­ees, and what is the sta­tus of these ne­go­ti­a­tions?”

Hinds re­spond­ed, “I am not in a po­si­tion to an­swer that at this junc­ture.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked if as a re­sult of the threat of lit­i­ga­tion from the ter­mi­nat­ed em­ploy­ees, the Gov­ern­ment was re­con­sid­er­ing its de­ci­sion.

Hinds said, “I just told you that is not true, so I am quite sur­prised to hear you premise that last ques­tion on that, that’s not true.”

Ear­li­er in the me­dia brief­ing, Hinds at­trib­uted what he called the un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims to one po­lit­i­cal par­ty. “So yes­ter­day there was in cir­cu­la­tion, and mem­bers of the me­dia called me about it, some press re­lease from some po­lit­i­cal par­ty, a one-man show as it is, that there was sup­posed to be some re-in­ter­view­ing and re-hir­ing in the SSA, that I have ob­served prompt­ed the ex­ist­ing di­rec­tor to have is­sued a press state­ment to­day where he made it pel­lu­cid­ly clear that no per­son that was ter­mi­nat­ed as a re­sult of all of this has been re­hired.”

That po­lit­i­cal par­ty is the Gary Grif­fith-led Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA).

Fol­low­ing the re­lease sent out yes­ter­day morn­ing by the min­istry, Grif­fith al­so put out a state­ment say­ing, “No one said they were re-hired; what we are stat­ing is that they have now spo­ken to these in­di­vid­u­als who have been fired, and now you are ask­ing them to let us come to some mu­tu­al agree­ment to con­sid­er re­turn­ing to the same lo­ca­tion where you claimed that these per­sons were not qual­i­fied in the first place.”

DCP Ben­jamin: We will
leave no stone un­turned in se­cu­ri­ty agency probe

Mean­while, Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (DCP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who was al­so in at­ten­dance at the me­dia con­fer­ence, could not give an ex­act an­swer as to when the po­lice probe in­to the claims made against those SSA em­ploy­ees will be con­clud­ed. “What I can tell you is that it’s an ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion at this time. And I have no fur­ther com­ment oth­er than that we will be leav­ing ab­solute­ly no stone un­turned in this mat­ter, and we will be go­ing all the way with this mat­ter,” DCP Ben­jamin re­spond­ed.