Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­lief will be pro­vid­ed to for­mer Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) em­ploy­ees who ap­ply and qual­i­fy for so­cial wel­fare grants from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

And sup­port will al­so be pro­vid­ed to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry’s Kent House staff who were im­pact­ed by the shoot­ing of late po­lice of­fi­cer Ja­mal Charles on Thurs­day.

This was con­firmed in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen. She pro­vid­ed an­swers on both is­sues, af­ter ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion PNM MP Symon De No­bri­ga on the re­spec­tive mat­ters.

De No­bri­ga had sought in­for­ma­tion on re­lief which might be pro­vid­ed to URP em­ploy­ees, giv­en the large num­ber of them who were dis­missed.

Ameen said, “Un­like the cal­lous treat­ment that the last gov­ern­ment met­ed out to those per­sons they fired from that same pro­gramme when they took of­fice, re­lief will be pro­vid­ed to those who ap­ply and qual­i­fy for so­cial wel­fare grants,” Ameen said.

She said re­lief will be pro­vid­ed to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, “be­cause get­ting rid of cor­rup­tion and ghost gangs and crim­i­nals will make more mon­ey avail­able to this coun­try!”

Ameen fur­ther said re­lief will al­so be pro­vid­ed to those work­ers and the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, “as the mon­ey saved from that cor­rup­tion that was so ram­pant un­der the last gov­ern­ment will be utilised to cre­ate new jobs to re­al peo­ple! Not ghost gangs and ghosts in the of­fice!”

De No­bri­ga, who called out Ameen’s “pet­ty pol­i­tics,” al­so ques­tioned her on what im­me­di­ate mea­sures psy­cho­log­i­cal and wel­fare sup­port ser­vices were ex­tend­ed to LG Min­istry Kent House staff who were present or im­pact­ed by the trag­ic shoot­ing of SRP Charles while on du­ty at the min­istry.

Ameen said there was a very trau­ma­tised at­mos­phere at the min­istry. She said she met with ACP Sagram­s­ingh, head of the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice unit, the min­istry’s deputy PS and “we al­ready have arranged cri­sis coun­selling for the em­ploy­ees on the com­pound.”

“Be­cause Mr Charles was a very jovial, in­ter­ac­tive per­son, many of the em­ploy­ees knew him, so there’s a sense of solemn at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment on this trag­ic in­ci­dent,” Ameen said

She re­it­er­at­ed con­do­lences to Charles’ fam­i­ly, wid­ow, col­leagues, min­istry staff and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice unit. On De No­bri­ga’s fur­ther query on long-term coun­selling for staff and their fam­i­lies, Ameen said the in­ci­dent oc­curred at 3.15 pm on Thurs­day, and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is still on­go­ing in­to the cause of death.

In ad­di­tion to the cri­sis coun­selling or­gan­ised by the min­istry for staff, the sup­port of the Vic­tims Sup­port Unit and TTPS will ad­vise the min­istry if they need to fur­ther en­gage, and the min­istry will await that guid­ance, she added.