Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Af­ter years of re­view­ing leg­is­la­tion, at­tend­ing de­bates, ad­vo­cat­ing and pro­mot­ing the in­ter­ests of their con­stituents in the Low­er House, some for­mer MPs are job­less and job hunt­ing fol­low­ing last year's gen­er­al elec­tion.

The re­sults of last Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion has left many de­feat­ed can­di­dates and those who were not cho­sen to con­test the polls for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment or the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship scan­ning the em­ploy­ment pages or seek­ing re­fer­rals from promi­nent peo­ple they know, while some have turned to farm­ing or have sought jobs out­side of our shores.

Life af­ter los­ing or leav­ing pol­i­tics is al­ways chal­leng­ing for some.

The PNM's vic­to­ry saw 19 new MPs be­ing elect­ed, while the PP had ten MPs join­ing the Low­er House.

Life hard for

Nile­ung Hy­po­lite

For for­mer Laven­tille West MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite, life has been an up­ward bat­tle since Par­lia­ment dis­solved last June.

Last March, Hy­po­lite was side­lined by the PNM's screen­ing com­mit­tee. Hy­po­lite ad­mit­ted that he has been "catch­ing his roy­al" af­ter not be­ing con­sid­ered for a po­si­tion un­der the PNM.

"It is hard. You have your fam­i­ly to take care of. We laid the foun­da­tion for the PNM's vic­to­ry in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. I was al­so told that when we were in gov­ern­ment there would be plen­ty po­si­tions that need­ed to be filled and there was noth­ing to wor­ry about. I am still await­ing a phone call to see whether some­thing will be of­fered to us. The work that we put in from 2010 to 2015, they can­not win the elec­tion overnight like that."

He said the small busi­ness his wife owned "can­not sup­port me."

Hy­po­lite has been mak­ing ends meet by dip­ping in­to his sav­ings.

While he knows the job of an MP "is on­ly for a con­tract­ed time," Hy­po­lite said he nev­er ex­pect­ed to be in this po­si­tion to­day, now that the PNM is in pow­er.

"Things have not been easy."

If Hy­po­lite con­tin­ues to re­main un­em­ployed, he said he might be forced to find a job cut­ting cloth at Jim­my Aboud, work­ing Cepep or URP, or shin­ing shoes for peo­ple.

"I can tell you we can­not con­tin­ue like this much longer. I have seen some for­mer MPs come right down to noth­ing. If you are not a pro­fes­sion­al like a doc­tor or lawyer to get back in­to prac­tice and you came straight from the pub­lic ser­vice or pri­vate sec­tor it's dif­fi­cult be­cause a per­son may not want you to come and work for them be­cause they did not like the par­ty you sup­port­ed."

Fitzger­ald Jef­frey turns to back­yard farm­ing in Guapo

For­mer La Brea MP Fitzger­ald Jef­frey, who rep­re­sent­ed the PNM from 2007 to 2015, has turned to back­yard farm­ing in Guapo.

Jef­frey plants short and medi­um-term crops as a hob­by and to put food on the fam­i­ly's ta­ble. "I just had a bumper crop of sor­rel. Just now I will be reap­ing pi­geon peas for Car­ni­val. The or­anges and grape­fruit will come af­ter," Jef­frey said.

Be­fore get­ting in­to pol­i­tics, Jef­frey, 64, dab­bled in agri­cul­ture.

"I have been do­ing it for 25 years. Now that I am no longer an MP, I am spend­ing more time in the gar­den, do church work, and give mo­ti­va­tion­al speech­es to stu­dents."

Jef­frey said the crops are not sold to the pub­lic, but con­sumed by his fam­i­ly.

The for­mer prin­ci­pal and min­is­ter of state in the min­istry of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion said his days in pol­i­tics are over.

Don­na Cox do­ing more with less

... 'I want to be re­spect­ed, not whine about what I don't have'

In the next two months, Don­na Cox who was re­ject­ed as Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP last April will com­plete her MBA in en­tre­pre­neur­ship, lead­er­ship and in­no­va­tion.

For the last six months, Cox who has been un­em­ployed, ad­mit­ted that she has spent quite a bit of her sav­ings.

"I have been do­ing so since I was in op­po­si­tion be­cause the salary in op­po­si­tion is small."

Cox said she has been adding self-aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures, buy­ing more lo­cal items, pay­ing her bills, and do­ing so much more with less.

"I will al­ways be able to make ends meet be­cause of my up­bring­ing I have had from my par­ents. As chil­dren we were al­ways taught to put some­thing away for a rainy day. I don't want to be pitied. I want to be re­spect­ed and not whine about what I don't have."

Even though the pay of an MP was not much, Cox said, "I still made the choice to be the ul­ti­mate MP and not seek em­ploy­ment else­where. That meant that I was able to live com­fort­ably on that salary be­cause I hung my hat where I could reach. If I fol­low Maslow's the­o­ry for ex­am­ple, I am def­i­nite­ly able to meet my ba­sic needs, so it's my high­er or­der needs that are in ques­tion. While it is dif­fi­cult man­ag­ing with­out a job, my feet are well plant­ed on the ground. I know who I am, and I know that a par­ty like the PNM does not for­sake com­mit­ment and per­for­mance. "

Asked if she felt she should have been gain­ful­ly em­ployed, Cox said "cer­tain­ly, if I said I didn't have ex­pec­ta­tions I would be ly­ing to my­self."

The fact that Cox was not se­lect­ed keeps her ground­ed in her Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples.

Cox said the gen­er­al elec­tion was won by Dr Kei­th Row­ley and a num­ber of trail­blaz­ers who are ab­sent from the front­line.

"My com­mit­ment to the peo­ple of T&T is no se­cret, many are aware of the role I have played while we were in Op­po­si­tion and to bring our par­ty to vic­to­ry."

The for­mer min­is­ter of state in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty hopes her ad­di­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions will help her be­come "mar­ketable in my field."

Amery Browne

gain­ful­ly em­ployed

Since his non-se­lec­tion at the PNM's screen­ing last April, Dr Amery Browne start­ed putting mea­sures in place to be­come gain­ful­ly em­ployed.

Fol­low­ing his ex­it as the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP, Browne be­gan treat­ing pa­tients as a pub­lic health physi­cian, fo­cus­ing main­ly on sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted in­fec­tions.

The for­mer min­is­ter of so­cial de­vel­op­ment has al­so been as­sist­ing at a PA­HO chaired com­mit­tee that fo­cus­es on im­prov­ing ma­ter­nal, neona­tal, child and ado­les­cent health care ser­vices.

Browne has al­so has been pen­ning a book, which he hopes to pub­lish, and al­so wrote a love bal­lad which he will record this year.

He still par­tic­i­pates in so­cial and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tiv­i­ties, con­tin­ues to serve as pres­i­dent of the Diego Mar­tin Dis­trict Scouts and spends time gar­den­ing.

"I have be­come quite ex­pe­ri­enced and pro­fi­cient at rear­ing sweet pep­pers and ochroes for the home ta­ble. I al­so am an avid deep sea fish­er­man."

Browne said at no time as an MP did he en­gage in bac­cha­nal, dis­re­spect and the im­ma­tu­ri­ty that we have of­ten seen on dis­play.

"At times I do look back and re­flect on how dif­fer­ent my life would have been if I had said "no" in 2007, but every­day I am en­cour­aged by so many per­sons who ap­pre­ci­ate and em­brace the de­cen­cy and thought­ful­ness that I al­ways en­deav­ored to re­flect to the pop­u­la­tion."

Over­all, he said, his ex­pe­ri­ence has been a pos­i­tive one.

"But my jour­ney and ex­pe­ri­ences have con­veyed on me a sober­ing cer­tain­ty that our na­tion still has a long way to grow. With full re­spect to all of my peers I can say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that I nev­er used of­fice to ac­cess a sin­gle cent apart from my of­fi­cial re­mu­ner­a­tion nor to seek or give favours, jobs, con­tracts or any ben­e­fit to any fam­i­ly mem­ber or any friend, I nev­er so­licit­ed or ac­cept­ed kick­backs, il­lic­it cash or gifts and I nev­er made de­ci­sions de­signed to ben­e­fit the priv­i­leged at the ex­pense of the hum­ble."

Browne said our na­tion needs no more ex­am­ples of politi­cians who are overt­ly or covert­ly cor­rupt, cal­lous and greedy.

"Of course, I have al­so seen the very ug­ly side of pol­i­tics where some folks can be­come drunk with the pow­er to el­e­vate and de­stroy, and I saw some of that dur­ing the screen­ings of the var­i­ous par­ties."

He said his fam­i­ly time was the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the changes that 2015 brought.

De­vant Ma­haraj works as a con­sul­tant, go­ing in­to agri busi­ness

For­mer food pro­duc­tion min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, who filed his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers on a UNC tick­et for Ca­roni Cen­tral last Au­gust but was re­ject­ed by the par­ty, is now em­ployed as a man­age­ment con­sul­tant for a pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The job was of­fered to Ma­haraj days af­ter the PP suf­fer­ered a crush­ing de­feat at the poll, but he on­ly took up the po­si­tion in No­vem­ber.

"As a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter you can­not get a job in a state en­ter­prise with the PNM. They fir­ing the peo­ple we hired much less to give us work."

Ma­haraj said since he left the min­istry over 400 em­ploy­ees were sent home.

Ma­haraj said he al­so in­tends to pur­sue some busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties with his wife in the com­ing months.

The busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, Ma­haraj said, would be agri­cul­tur­al re­lat­ed.

"The min­istry opened my eyes to the po­ten­tial in agri­cul­ture."

Nizam Baksh keeps busy with fam­i­ly busi­ness and grand­chil­dren.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter and Na­pari­ma MP Nizam Baksh is now work­ing in his fam­i­ly's Bar­rack­pore busi­ness since giv­ing up pol­i­tics.

Hav­ing spent 19 years in pol­i­tics, Baksh, 74, has been keep­ing him­self oc­cu­pied do­ing so­cial work for the Bar­rack­pore Is­lam­ic Cen­tre and spends time with his sev­en grand­chil­dren.

"I have been keep­ing my­self busy. All the things I could not do when I was an MP and gov­ern­ment min­is­ter I am find­ing time to do now. I am spend­ing time with my fam­i­ly...main­ly my grand­chil­dren and work­ing in my fam­i­ly's busi­ness."

Baksh's fam­i­ly owns a con­struc­tion equip­ment and spare parts busi­ness.

He ad­mit­ted that be­fore he be­came an MP he worked in the busi­ness.

Baksh was re­placed by Rod­ney Charles.

Cadiz goes back in­to his busi­ness

Hav­ing man­aged three gov­ern­ment min­istries–trade and in­dus­try, tourism and trans­port from 2010 to 2015 un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment–Stephen Cadiz said he did not have to go job hunt­ing when he was not re­s­e­lect­ed to con­test the Ch­agua­nas East seat.

In­stead, Cadiz jumped back in­to his equip­ment rental and emer­gency pow­er com­pa­ny busi­ness­es, which he man­aged be­fore en­ter­ing the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

"Now I am go­ing back in­to the busi­ness at a chair­man's lev­el. I won't be run­ning the day-to-day af­fairs, but will have an ac­tive role in mak­ing the right de­ci­sions for the com­pa­nies to keep it op­er­a­tional in this re­ces­sion."

Vas­ant Bharath set to work in Africa

For­mer trade and in­dus­try min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath will be pack­ing his bags next month to take up a lu­cra­tive job in Africa.

Bharath, who was de­feat­ed by the PNM's Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in the St Joseph seat in the gen­er­al elec­tion, said he al­so had sev­er­al per­son­al projects in the Unit­ed King­dom which he plans to re­sus­ci­tate.

"I had of­fers from mul­ti na­tion­als to do some work in Africa, which I would start in mid Feb­ru­ary. I will be do­ing work for them in one of the African coun­tries. As you know, I am a char­tered ac­coun­tant, but I do have a mas­ters de­gree in law and busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion."

Bharath will be re­quired to work three to six-month pe­ri­ods in ei­ther man­ag­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and pro­vid­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.

He said he did not re­ceive any of­fers in Trinidad and opt­ed to go out­side when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came knock­ing.

"I will be trav­el­ling back and forth. One has to keep busy."

The firm does not have a base in Trinidad, Bharath said.

Bharath, who was un­suc­cess­ful in his bid for po­lit­i­cal leader in the UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tion last De­cem­ber, said he re­mains a mem­ber of the UNC.