Sascha Wil­son

For­mer con­tract work­ers, who main­tained and cleaned Palmiste Park, in San Fer­nan­do, for more than a decade held a protest yes­ter­day af­ter they claimed their ser­vices were abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.

The work­ers were em­ployed with var­i­ous con­trac­tors un­der the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion Wa­ter­shed and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme, but since March they had no work.

They were, how­ev­er, un­der the im­pres­sion that this was due to the COVID-19 re­stric­tions even though they be­came aware that the con­trac­tor´s ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed.

Mala Balka­ran who worked at the park for 12 years said, “We stand on the min­is­ter word that we com­ing back here to work when the oth­er con­trac­tor take over be­cause that is what they do in the past years when con­trac­tors come to take over they keep their work­ers.”

She said no one called them back out to work but they vis­it­ed the park on Mon­day af­ter learn­ing that it was be­ing cleaned by oth­er work­ers.

Not­ing that 65 work­ers were now un­em­ployed, she lament­ed,”I find that is un­fair to the work­ers who work the past 15 years here and take care of this park and we nev­er had a com­plaint. As he said we cut bush we plant trees we do every­thing we sup­pose to do.”

Balka­ran said they nev­er ap­plied for any of the so­cial re­lief grants be­cause dur­ing a COVID-19 dai­ly press con­fer­ence it was stat­ed that forestry work­ers, CEPEP and URP work­ers would be paid.

Com­plain­ing that most of them were sin­gle par­ents, Moo­nan Bip­ta who worked there for 15 years, said they went to Forestry Di­vi­sion in San Fer­nan­do but was told that the de­part­ment was moved to Brechin Cas­tle.

Re­quest­ing a meet­ing with Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat, the work­ers said if they get any re­sponse they will seek le­gal ac­tion or take their protest to Brechin Cas­tle.

They were sup­port­ed by Palmiste coun­cil­lor Roland Halls, who said over his 11 years in of­fice, he has ob­served the im­pres­sive and dili­gent work done by the work­ers.

When Guardian con­tact­ed Ramb­harat he said the work­ers were em­ployed with con­trac­tors and not the min­istry. He ex­plained that the re­for­esta­tion pro­gramme has since been trans­ferred from his min­istry to the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (RDC) which is un­der the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

RDC´s chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is told Guardian Me­dia that the re­for­esta­tion pro­gramme was of­fi­cial­ly trans­ferred to the RDC via cab­i­net note on April 6. “It is RDC’s un­der­stand­ing that all con­trac­tors whilst un­der the con­trol of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, were no­ti­fied of the ter­mi­na­tion of their ser­vices.”

She added that eval­u­a­tion of the ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est by in­ter­est­ed groups were con­duct­ed and the new­ly se­lect­ed con­trac­tors com­menced work on June 15.