Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said one of the main aims of her plans to put the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) under three ministries, with the Office of the Prime Minister as the chief disburser of money, was to weed out corruption. The PM said that would ensure better monitoring of the programme and the weeding-out of elements, like ghost gangs, that led to corruption. She was speaking yesterday at the launch of Government's national food security campaign at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann's.
"I thought long and hard and came up with an idea to separate the URP into several ministries to have greater control and greater monitoring over it. It is a very large progamme," Persad-Bissessar said.
The URP will be separated into three units under the Ministries of Food Production, Land and Marine Affairs, Local Government and the People and Social Development. "The Office of the Prime Minister will be the accounting arm for the disbursement of monies to the three ministries," the PM said.
Further, the low productivity of URP workers and the fact that they seem to benefit little from the programme were other reasons for her decision to separate it, she added. She said under the Food Production Ministry URP workers would get the opportunity to learn a skill so they would not have to depend on the programme for the rest of their lives.