Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­lieves the coun­try’s un­em­ploy­ment fig­ures have jumped from 60,000 last year to over 100,000 dur­ing the sec­ond wave of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The 40,000 in­crease, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said may just be a frac­tion of the ac­tu­al fig­ure, as she an­tic­i­pates “more job loss­es are like­ly,” to hap­pen, stat­ing that af­ter five years of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion and bil­lions spent, the Gov­ern­ment tried to use the pan­dem­ic as an ex­cuse for the cri­sis they have cre­at­ed.

“When it comes to ac­count­ing to the na­tion, this gov­ern­ment has nev­er been co­op­er­a­tive. Their un­will­ing­ness to ac­count to the pub­lic on this ur­gent mat­ter is trou­bling. The Gov­ern­ment must ac­count as to how these grants were dis­trib­uted. It could very well be a case where ap­pli­cants from Op­po­si­tion con­stituen­cies are be­ing ne­glect­ed. It is un­ac­cept­able that so many are kept wait­ing for re­lief up to till to­day.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia about the de­lay in pay­ments to ap­pli­cants of the rental as­sis­tance and salary re­lief grants.

Since the PNM as­sumed of­fice in 2015, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said work­ers have been thrown on the bread­line while busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to close.

While cit­i­zens are be­ing urged to tight­en their belts, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the PNM con­tin­ues to en­joy lav­ish lifestyles.

She said from last Oc­to­ber the un­em­ploy­ment fig­ure was es­ti­mat­ed at 60,000.

With the ad­vent of the pan­dem­ic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said “I am sure this fig­ure has in­creased to well over 100,000 job lost un­der this Row­ley regime. Fur­ther­more, more job loss­es are like­ly. Once again they have let the peo­ple down. Their en­tire ad­min­is­tra­tion has been run­ning the same way these grants are- with no plan or di­rec­tion. The ap­pli­ca­tion form it­self had to be al­tered sev­er­al times in the ini­tial stages.”

She said every day con­stituents have been flood­ing the of­fices of Op­po­si­tion MPs beg­ging for as­sis­tance, as they await their grants.

At Thurs­day’s post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ad­mit­ted that some ap­pli­ca­tions may have fall­en through the cracks and some hu­man er­ror.

Im­bert al­so stat­ed that the life of the Salary Grant Unit will be ex­tend­ed to year’s end to deal with the back­log of peo­ple who ap­plied but did not qual­i­fy be­cause they did not put all the in­for­ma­tion need­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was not un­rea­son­able to con­sid­er that the grants were a gen­er­al elec­tion ploy to woo votes. (SH)