Af­ter six fort­nights with­out pay, frus­tra­tion boiled over yes­ter­day as con­trac­tors and work­ers un­der the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme (NR­WRP) staged a protest out­side the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny’s (RDC) of­fice in Brechin Cas­tle, Cou­va.

Al­though 60 first-time con­trac­tors and 1,800 work­ers were promised fort­night­ly wages on three-month con­tracts be­gin­ning April 4, they claimed not a sin­gle pay­ment was made.

Many said they are now strug­gling to pay bills, and some fear for their safe­ty amid threats from un­paid work­ers.

Work­ers said vis­its to the NR­WRP and RDC of­fices have yield­ed no an­swers, with both agen­cies re­fer­ring in­quiries to each oth­er. A no­tice on the RDC’s front door stat­ed the pro­gramme had been trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, di­rect­ing con­trac­tors back to NR­WRP. How­ev­er, pro­test­ers said the NR­WRP di­rect­ed them to RDC CEO Ja­son Kissoon, who they claimed has re­mained un­reach­able.

Last Wednes­day, PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi and chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les claimed the 4,608 work­ers and con­trac­tors from the pro­gramme had been fired.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, PNM of­fi­cials claimed they re­ceived nu­mer­ous phone calls that the con­tracts had been ter­mi­nat­ed. So far, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied the PNM’s claims.

Yes­ter­day, con­trac­tor Reese Ren­nie, who man­ages a team of sin­gle moth­ers in Em­ba­cadere, said she vis­it­ed both of­fices re­peat­ed­ly but re­ceived no an­swers.

“The lat­est in­for­ma­tion that we got was on our sec­ond fort­night, they told us, every week, is next week and for the longest while, noth­ing. Fri­day, the in­for­ma­tion I got was that the man­ag­er went home, and they told us we need to come to Mr Kissoon, the CEO. We came here, me and two oth­er con­trac­tors and no one has an­swered us or giv­en us a re­ply,” Ren­nie said.

The work­ers’ con­tracts end­ed on Ju­ly 7, and with no in­di­ca­tion of re­new­al, they re­main in lim­bo. Still, Ren­nie said her team con­tin­ued work­ing, clear­ing thick over­grown bush de­spite haz­ardous con­di­tions.

“I have videos, I have pic­tures of women cut­ting down. We ran in­to bee­hives and all kinds of things. No, we need our mon­ey. These peo­ple worked too hard not to get their salaries,” she said.

Ren­nie said many of the women work from 6 am to mid­day and some are now in debt.

“It is sad be­cause I have 30 sin­gle moth­ers work­ing with me, get­ting up from 6 am to 12 noon. Some of them are due to school trans­port. I lend some of them mon­ey, and noth­ing. It is sad. It is sad be­cause it is poor peo­ple.”

Ren­nie said she spoke with the sec­re­tary of a for­mer min­is­ter, who told her they were no longer in of­fice and could not help. Her ef­forts to get an ap­point­ment with Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen were al­so un­suc­cess­ful. She plans to vis­it Ameen in per­son.

Sher­win Joseph, who op­er­ates in Moru­ga, said the work­ers are among the most vul­ner­a­ble and now face hard­ship.

Ef­forts to con­tact RDC CEO Ja­son Kissoon and Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram were un­suc­cess­ful.