Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Rur­al De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi claims work­ers who dealt with the COVID-19 re­sponse in the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and sev­er­al work­ers in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Min­istry are among the lat­est fac­ing job­less­ness due to the non-re­new­al of con­tracts.

And the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has es­tab­lished a hot­line for peo­ple to in­form the Op­po­si­tion of fir­ings, con­struc­tive dis­missals, threats of fir­ings, and con­tract non-re­newals.

Al-Rawi and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les spoke about the is­sues at a me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion leader in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

This af­ter re­cent claims by Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters Bar­ry Padarath and Sad­dam Ho­sein of con­tracts be­ing re­newed in the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) and the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny’s (RDC) re­for­esta­tion pro­gramme days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Beck­les said peo­ple in sev­er­al min­istries are re­port­ing is­sues and the PNM has es­tab­lished a hot­line for this.

“The UNC’s mantra has been ‘when the UNC wins, every­body wins’ and we’ve had in­for­ma­tion com­ing to our at­ten­tion from sev­er­al quar­ters where a num­ber of per­sons have been fired and are, of course, be­gin­ning to pan­ic that this may very well be the UNC’s prac­tice,” Beck­les said.

Al-Rawi re­fut­ed Padarath’s claims that con­trac­tors at RDC and Cepep were col­lect­ing $45,000 month­ly.

“That’s not true. At Cepep, the month­ly con­trac­tor fee is $21,000. At RDC, the en­tire fig­ure for the con­trac­tor is a whop­ping $4,581.60 cents.”

He said the RDC em­ploys ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,700 work­ers and a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion as­sis­tant earns $120 dai­ly, tool op­er­a­tor $146 dai­ly and fore­man $165 dai­ly. He said a Cepep labour­er earns $135 dai­ly, op­er­a­tor $145.20 dai­ly and fore­man $165 dai­ly, adding there are over 10,700 at Cepep.

Not­ing that re­views of both pro­grammes were un­der­way, Al-Rawi said Padarath ac­cused him of “tak­ing in front” be­fore mass fir­ings oc­curred. He said he in­ter­pret­ed that as con­fir­ma­tion of mass fir­ings.

He said PNM’s in­for­ma­tion is that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to re­view things en masse.

“Thou­sands of work­ers fear they’ll sim­ply be put out of jobs ei­ther via re­duc­tion of the teams that con­trac­tors man­age or via can­cel­la­tion of the pro­gramme en­tire­ly,” Al-Rawi said.

“I can con­firm that the Gov­ern­ment ap­pears to have tak­en an ap­proach, es­pe­cial­ly with re­spect to COVID-19 work­ers at the RHAs. One RHA alone 700 work­ers, an­oth­er RHA—900 work­ers, to sim­ply not re­new per­sons in­to their con­tract. So, the is­sue of fir­ing is en­larged by non-re­new­al of con­tracts.”

He said 80 peo­ple in an RHA have al­ready been sent in­to job­less­ness due to the non-re­new­al of their con­tracts.

“... Thou­sands, par­tic­u­lar­ly across the low­est paid ech­e­lons of Cepep, Forestry and now the RHAs, where the di­rec­tion has been giv­en that there are to be no re­new­al of con­tracts for first-time con­trac­tors in par­tic­u­lar ...”

He said he un­der­stood that at the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, sev­er­al peo­ple have al­so been sum­mar­i­ly brought for­ward for their con­tracts to be bought out to the tune of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.

“In­stead of putting them in­to an­oth­er area of the AG’s Of­fice, they’ve been brought for­ward, told ‘pack your bags im­me­di­ate­ly’, es­cort­ed out by se­cu­ri­ty and told, ‘we’ll get back to you on the pur­chase of your con­tracts’.”

Al-Rawi point­ed out that cur­rent Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor Bri­an Baig worked at the AG’s Of­fice and con­tin­ued to so do un­in­ter­rupt­ed when Al-Rawi was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al dur­ing the PNM’s term in of­fice. He said Baig wasn’t fired be­cause of his pol­i­tics and he ap­peared as a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sen­a­tor from time to time. Al-Rawi said the on­ly time he in­ter­act­ed with Baig re­gard­ing his job was when he saw him in the Sen­ate’s pub­lic gallery dur­ing work­ing hours and said a mere vis­it to the gallery didn’t war­rant at­ten­dance.

He called on Gov­ern­ment to en­sure fair­ness and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, adding that peo­ple who have po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions ought not to be so la­belled “just be­cause they re­ceived a con­tract at the time a gov­ern­ment was in of­fice.”

“It can’t be that every­body hired dur­ing our ten years of of­fice must be la­belled PNM and be es­cort­ed out with po­lice,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi al­so re­butted Gov­ern­ment claims over the ex­ten­sion of con­tracts. He said this was a mat­ter square­ly for the boards of di­rec­tors of Cepep or RDC and pro­cure­ment law re­quires cer­tain process­es to be done for new con­tracts.

“The ex­ten­sion of con­tracts is a mat­ter that went be­fore those boards and they took steps that they saw in the in­ter­est of busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, as it was ex­plained to me—I as min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment gave no in­struc­tions and cer­tain­ly could not and was not in any con­tract re­newals per se. A min­is­ter, un­der the law, doesn’t ex­tend in­to those things.”