Ke­jan Haynes

Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi has raised is­sues with the fact that 140 em­ploy­ees at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment were sent home af­ter their con­tracts end­ed and were not re­newed.

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day in the Par­lia­ment dur­ing an op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence.

“At the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­istry that I used to lead, 140 per­sons were sent home. Con­tracts end­ed. They were not re­newed. Those were the change agents,” he said.

While the gov­ern­ment has not of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed the ter­mi­na­tions, Guardian Me­dia has ob­tained a What­sApp mes­sage from the pro­gramme’s di­rec­tor con­firm­ing the ini­tia­tive will end with the ex­pi­ra­tion of con­tracts on June 30.

On June 17, a mem­ber of the team mes­saged Guardian Me­dia say­ing, “I'm mes­sag­ing to let you know that the 140 change agents have been giv­en no­tice (via What­sApp) that we are not to be re­tained.”

That per­son mes­saged again to­day, say­ing, “The CEO of the cor­po­ra­tion I work at called us in on Thurs­day to in­form us that she re­ceived an email say­ing that Mon­day would be our last day."

In a mes­sage to the team, the Com­mu­ni­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tor in the “RDLG Change Agents” group, wrote:

“I re­ceived of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion to­day that the pro­gram will con­clude with the ex­pi­ra­tion of your con­tracts on June 30th.

As we ap­proach the end of this chap­ter, I want to ex­tend my deep­est grat­i­tude and heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions to each of you.

Over the past two years, your un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion, re­silience, and com­mit­ment have left an in­deli­ble mark not just on the suc­cess of the pro­gram, but on me per­son­al­ly."

The work­ers said they were cur­rent­ly on their sixth con­sec­u­tive con­tract, with no ac­cess to sick leave, va­ca­tion, or gra­tu­ity, de­spite 26 months of con­tin­u­ous em­ploy­ment.

Guardian Me­dia asked Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen about the pos­si­ble dis­mals ear­li­er this month. She didn't con­firm di­rect­ly but said pro­grammes and ini­tia­tives start­ed un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion were un­der re­view.

She stressed that de­ci­sions would not be made “vikey-vike” (reck­less­ly) but would align with the new gov­ern­ment’s goals.

Among pro­grammes un­der re­view are change man­age­ment ini­tia­tives and poli­cies in­tro­duced by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The ob­jec­tives in­clude con­tin­u­ing pro­grammes that are ef­fec­tive, re­pur­pos­ing or dis­con­tin­u­ing those that do not meet cur­rent goals, mak­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment more ef­fi­cient and peo­ple-cen­tred, and strength­en­ing re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions through bet­ter ac­cess to hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources.

Ameen said lo­cal gov­ern­ment should play a more ac­tive role in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, sup­port­ing so­cial ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion, flood mit­i­ga­tion, and eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, ar­eas she be­lieves were side­lined be­fore.

The Op­po­si­tion claims over 12,000 jobs have been lost since the UNC took of­fice in April, with Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi cit­ing cuts across CEPEP, WASA, RHAs, and the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, and al­leg­ing con­tract buy­outs at the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.