Resh­ma Ra­goonath

New­ly-ap­point­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Labour Rudranath In­dars­ingh has laid down the law for Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers, vow­ing that any­one caught in 'wrong­do­ing' will be hauled be­fore the court. In­dars­ingh, who was shift­ed from the Works Min­istry to Labour, made the state­ment as he launched the URP's Com­mu­ni­ty Projects Ini­tia­tive at Buen In­ten­to, Princes Town, on Wednes­day.

The min­is­ter warned: "If there is any wrong­do­ing those re­spon­si­ble will be brought be­fore the ju­di­cial process (court) in keep­ing with due process of the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go." As­sur­ing that the URP would be redi­rect­ed and re-eval­u­at­ed, In­dars­ingh said: "There will be fair­ness, eq­ui­ty and fair­play in the sys­tem. "If the law en­force­ment agen­cies un­der the min­istry's con­trol need to in­ter­vene it will do so to en­sure good ac­count­abil­i­ty, good gov­er­nance and the lev­el of cor­rup­tion re­duced as we had in the past."

In­dars­ingh stressed that there would no longer be 75/25 dis­tri­b­u­tion of URP projects.

The min­is­ter said over the years the num­ber of projects and URP gangs had been rel­a­tive­ly small in then Op­po­si­tion con­trolled area. That, he said, would change. He added: "There seems to be a heavy im­bal­ance where the last ad­min­is­tra­tion fo­cused heav­i­ly on hav­ing projects in con­stituen­cies un­der its po­lit­i­cal con­trol. They used and ma­noeu­vred the sys­tem as a vot­ing bank." The min­is­ter added: "It will not be busi­ness as usu­al (in URP) as we have grown ac­cus­tomed to over the past nine years when you go to work and say it's Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed so no val­ue for mon­ey, no trans­paren­cy, no good gov­er­nance, no pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as it re­lates to this pro­gramme."