An­na-Lisa Paul

Of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries are set to meet with of­fi­cials of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) to de­cide the fate of 67 em­ploy­ees on Mon­day.

The team, which will be led by Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Joy Per­sad-My­ers, will in­clude oth­er se­nior and tech­ni­cal of­fi­cials.

The meet­ing is sched­uled to take place at 1.30 pm at the min­istry's of­fice in St Clair.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns by the work­ers–most of whom have been clas­si­fied as ca­su­al and reg­u­lar em­ploy­ees, Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat yes­ter­day ex­plained the ra­tio­nale be­hind what he stressed was a "lay off" and not re­trench­ment.

Speak­ing to re­porters as he left the Min­istry of Health's An­ti-Mi­cro­bial Re­sis­tance sem­i­nar at the Mar­riott Ho­tel, In­vaders Bay, Mu­cu­rapo, to at­tend yes­ter­day's sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, Ramb­harat said his min­istry had em­ployed a "lot of ca­su­al work­ers" be­cause of the par­tic­u­lar sea­son.

Hav­ing just com­plet­ed the dry sea­son, Ramb­harat said there was no longer a need for so many per­sons. Fol­low­ing an in­ter­nal ex­er­cise, an ini­tial list of 69 work­ers was iden­ti­fied.

How­ev­er, Ramb­harat said this num­ber had been re­duced to 67 which in­clud­ed a mix of both reg­u­lar and ca­su­al work­ers.

Re­fer­ring to the col­lec­tive agree­ment with the NUGFW, Ramb­harat said, "It pro­vides for the min­istry to lay off reg­u­lar and ca­su­al work­ers when there is no work for them."

Stress­ing that "it is a lay off, not re­trench­ment," the min­is­ter said the agree­ment stip­u­lat­ed that reg­u­lar work­ers be giv­en five days' no­tice and that ca­su­al work­ers be giv­en two days' no­tice, as to their pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing.

Al­though no de­ci­sion was tak­en up to yes­ter­day re­gard­ing the fate of the 67 work­ers, Ramb­harat gave the as­sur­ance that the team would "strive for fair­ness" in their de­lib­er­a­tions with the union.

In fact, he said, some of the work­ers may ac­tu­al­ly "be re­tained in oth­er po­si­tions."

How­ev­er, he warned, "There will be oth­er NUGFW mem­bers who will be com­pet­ing for the same po­si­tions."

Stat­ing that the min­istry was not there to cre­ate jobs but that there were cur­rent­ly 174 pub­lic ser­vice po­si­tions that need­ed to be filled along with oth­er con­tract po­si­tions, Ramb­harat said they want­ed to en­sure that per­sons with tech­ni­cal qual­i­fi­ca­tions, com­pe­tence and ca­pac­i­ty in their re­spec­tive fields were hired.

Work­ers protest­ed af­ter an in­ter­nal memo by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary re­gard­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of dai­ly rat­ed work­ers was leaked last week, prompt­ing Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray to call on Gov­ern­ment to dis­con­tin­ue the prac­tice of send­ing work­ers home.

Paray said the move was counter-pro­duc­tive and al­so posed a threat to the coun­try's food se­cu­ri­ty.

He said it was an in­hu­mane ac­tion which struck at the heart of the work­ing class.

Re­spond­ing via so­cial me­dia, Ramb­harat lat­er said that dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2014/2015, an ex­ces­sive num­ber of dai­ly paid ca­su­al em­ploy­ees had been re­tained in the Lands Di­vi­sion, and that there was now in­suf­fi­cient work to sus­tain the large labour force.

He said the is­sue of qual­i­fied per­son­nel had al­so arisen and that it was on this ba­sis, the de­ci­sion to re­duce the work­force had been tak­en.

Ramb­harat yes­ter­day promised that they would work with the union as they moved for­ward on the is­sue.