Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen says the “blame UNC” ex­cuse no longer holds up when it comes to the state of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

In a state­ment, Ameen said af­ter al­most a decade in charge un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, for­mer min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the pro­gramme’s fail­ures.

She ac­cused Sinanan of try­ing to rewrite his­to­ry.

Ameen said, “It is ev­i­dent Mr Sinanan has not yet re­ceived the memo; the ‘Blame UNC’ card has of­fi­cial­ly ex­pired. Pub­lic dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the pro­gramme un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion is not po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, it is root­ed in re­al­i­ty.”

She ac­cused Sinanan of al­low­ing years of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and weak over­sight to flour­ish. Ac­cord­ing to Ameen, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led cor­po­ra­tions were rou­tine­ly de­nied ac­cess to URP re­sources, and there were cred­i­ble re­ports of work­ers be­ing side­lined based on po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

“These in­ci­dents were not iso­lat­ed. They were part of a larg­er pat­tern of in­ter­fer­ence that se­vere­ly com­pro­mised the in­tegri­ty of the pro­gramme,” she said.

Ameen al­so claimed that po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed in­di­vid­u­als were award­ed con­tracts while qual­i­fied con­trac­tors were ig­nored, pro­cure­ment pro­to­cols were by­passed, and many com­mu­ni­ties were left with sub­stan­dard or in­com­plete projects.

She dis­missed Sinanan’s sug­ges­tion that re­duced spend­ing dur­ing his tenure meant bet­ter per­for­mance.

“Re­duced ex­pen­di­ture does not equate to im­proved per­for­mance,” she said.

“The URP un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion be­came stag­nant and in­ef­fec­tive, not be­cause of lim­it­ed fund­ing but be­cause of a lack of lead­er­ship and the po­lit­i­cal will to re­form.”

Ameen said the Gov­ern­ment, led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was work­ing to clean up the pro­gramme and re­build it to serve cit­i­zens eq­ui­tably.

“We were elect­ed to fix it, and we will,” she said.

Sinanan, in a state­ment Mon­day, had de­fend­ed his track record, claim­ing the pro­gramme was plagued by over­spend­ing and gang in­flu­ence when he took of­fice. “Con­cert­ed steps were made over the 2016 to 2024 pe­ri­od to re­duce gang cul­ture and in­ter­fer­ence in the pro­gramme,” he said.

He point­ed to a 2015 Cab­i­net Minute which showed that un­der the for­mer UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, $573 mil­lion of a $725 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion had al­ready been spent, and an ad­di­tion­al $250 mil­lion was re­quest­ed. He said most of that went to ex­ter­nal in­fra­struc­ture con­tracts.

Sinanan said his min­istry re­versed that ap­proach by re­turn­ing to in-house labour and ma­te­ri­als, com­plet­ing more than 2,800 projects in 2024 with a bud­get of $282 mil­lion, which rose slight­ly above $300 mil­lion af­ter min­i­mum wage ad­just­ments.

“Even with the sub­stan­tial­ly low­ered ex­pen­di­ture, there was sim­i­lar, if not in­creased, tan­gi­ble out­put,” he said. “This clear­ly de­bunks the un­in­formed state­ments of reck­less spend­ing and wastage.”

He said hir­ing sys­tems were re­struc­tured to in­clude in­ter­views and reg­u­lar au­dits, re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for abuse.

“As with any pro­gramme of this na­ture, there may be in­di­vid­u­als who seek to de­rail the process. I wel­come any in­ves­ti­ga­tion and any neg­a­tive el­e­ments to be held ac­count­able.”