Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) work­ers yes­ter­day staged a protest over the ap­point­ment of a deputy di­rec­tor from out­side the pub­lic ser­vice, which re­port­ed­ly saw those next in line for the post be­ing by­passed.

Work­ers took to the pave­ment out­side the NL­CB’s head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain dur­ing their lunch break, where they waved plac­ards and called for the re­moval of a se­nior of­fi­cial.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion deputy gen­er­al sec­re­tary Kel­lon Wal­lace said the work­ers and the union found the ap­point­ment “to be an­oth­er at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to in­fil­trate the pub­lic ser­vice.”

“It is an­oth­er at­tempt be­cause we have a deputy di­rec­tor who would have gone on pre-re­tire­ment leave, the NL­CB board would have writ­ten to the Min­istry of Fi­nance to put a pri­vate cit­i­zen as the head of NL­CB of T&T, which is a gov­ern­ment or pub­lic ser­vice po­si­tion,” Wal­lace said.

“We have a con­sul­tant get­ting po­si­tions over pub­lic ser­vants who are sup­posed to be el­e­vat­ed when these things hap­pen, when the di­rec­tor goes on leave or the deputy di­rec­tor goes on leave, the next per­son in line would be the su­per­vi­sor of lot­tery,” he said.

He said the PSA sent let­ters to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer on the is­sue but was yet to re­ceive a re­sponse.

Wal­lace said the work­ers in­tend to con­tin­ue to protest un­til the mat­ter is ad­dressed, adding the work­ers have vowed not to take any di­rec­tives from non-pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

“We must get this fixed im­me­di­ate­ly be­cause the di­rec­tor would have gone from Au­gust 8, so this con­sul­tant who in­voic­es NL­CB, who is go­ing to sign off her in­voice? Her­self to her­self? This is the kind of thing they have go­ing on in T&T and again, NL­CB han­dles mil­lions of dol­lars and it’s in pri­vate hands not the Gov­ern­ment’s hands tech­ni­cal­ly be­cause it is not a pub­lic of­fi­cer at the head of this or­gan­i­sa­tion, which is what it is sup­posed to be,” Wal­lace said.

Wal­lace added that there are nu­mer­ous is­sues al­so af­fect­ing work­ers at NL­CB, in­clud­ing con­tract work­ers who are yet to be made per­ma­nent.

“Tem­po­rary for 20 years not ap­point­ed, no act­ing con­tracts are out­stand­ing, some haven’t got­ten their writ­ten con­tracts from since as far back as 2016, gra­tu­ity out­stand­ing. Em­ploy­ees here are fed up now and this is the last straw, where they have tak­en a pri­vate cit­i­zen to give them or­ders.”