Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Con­trac­tors and work­ers un­der the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme (NR­WRP) can ex­pect to be paid by the end of this week, as the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (RDC) says it is work­ing over­time to ver­i­fy timesheets.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the RDC con­firmed that the NR­WRP is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing a tran­si­tion to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries (MALF).

This han­dover took ef­fect on May 12. Dur­ing the tran­si­tion, the RDC said it con­tin­ues to sup­port the fund­ing of the pro­gramme and the re­lease of pay­ments.

It stat­ed that timesheets sub­mit­ted by the NR­WRP are ac­tive­ly un­der re­view and ver­i­fi­ca­tion in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

“Pay­ments will be is­sued up­on com­ple­tion of the nec­es­sary ver­i­fi­ca­tion process. To sup­port this ef­fort, the RD­Cs and NR­WRP ad­min­is­tra­tive teams have ex­tend­ed their work­ing hours and al­lo­cat­ed ad­di­tion­al re­sources to en­sure time­ly dis­burse­ment. It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that pay­ments will be made by the end of this week,” the RDC stat­ed.

On Mon­day, con­trac­tors and work­ers staged a protest out­side the RDC’s of­fice in Brechin Cas­tle, Cou­va.

Pro­test­ers claimed they had not been paid for three months, de­spite be­ing promised fort­night­ly wages un­der three-month con­tracts that be­gan in April.

Many con­trac­tors, some of whom man­age teams of 30 work­ers—in­clud­ing sin­gle moth­ers—said they con­tin­ued to work un­der haz­ardous con­di­tions with­out re­ceiv­ing a sin­gle pay­cheque.

These con­di­tions in­clud­ed over­grown ter­rain, thorny veg­e­ta­tion, and en­coun­ters with bee­hives.

Ressa Ren­nie, a con­trac­tor from Em­ba­cadere, said, “It is sad be­cause I have 30 sin­gle moth­ers work­ing with me. I lend some of them mon­ey and noth­ing. It is poor peo­ple.”

Mean­while, Sher­win Joseph, an­oth­er con­trac­tor from Moru­ga, added,

“It is dev­as­tat­ing to see the most vul­ner­a­ble treat­ed this way. Some bor­rowed mon­ey just to show up to work.”

The con­trac­tors ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion from both the RDC and NR­WRP, claim­ing that each agency redi­rect­ed them to the oth­er.

They said a no­tice post­ed at the RDC’s of­fice in­di­cat­ed the NR­WRP had been trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, but no clear guid­ance was pro­vid­ed re­gard­ing pay­ment or con­tract re­new­al.

Some con­trac­tors al­so re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing threats from un­paid work­ers, who be­lieved the con­trac­tors had al­ready been paid and were with­hold­ing wages.

The RDC ad­vised con­trac­tors with griev­ances to re­fer to Clause 9 of their con­tracts, which out­lines the pro­ce­dure for ad­dress­ing such is­sues.

The RDC main­tained that it re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing a smooth tran­si­tion while up­hold­ing trans­paren­cy and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.