RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John has clar­i­fied that her min­istry is not re­spon­si­ble for the Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces (NPUPS), amid pub­lic ques­tions about the ini­tia­tive’s progress and mon­i­tor­ing.

Re­spond­ing to me­dia queries, the min­is­ter said NPUPS falls out­side her min­istry’s re­mit and should not be con­fused with the work cur­rent­ly be­ing car­ried out by her teams across the coun­try.

Min­istry crews have been work­ing day and night to cut over­grown verges along na­tion­al high­ways. John ex­plained that the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture is im­ple­ment­ing a sep­a­rate, dis­tinct pro­gramme fo­cused on two key ar­eas: veg­e­ta­tion con­trol along high­ways and road­ways, and the clean­ing and prepa­ra­tion of drainage sys­tems ahead of the up­com­ing rainy sea­son.

“These works are aimed at re­duc­ing flood risks, im­prov­ing road safe­ty, and en­sur­ing ma­jor trans­port cor­ri­dors re­main ac­ces­si­ble dur­ing pe­ri­ods of heavy rain­fall,” she said.

Veg­e­ta­tion con­trol in­volves cut­ting and clear­ing over­grown ar­eas that may ob­struct vis­i­bil­i­ty or in­ter­fere with drainage, while drainage prepa­ra­tion fo­cus­es on re­mov­ing de­bris and block­ages from wa­ter­cours­es, the min­is­ter added.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about em­ploy­ment un­der the cur­rent pro­gramme, in­clud­ing the du­ra­tion of con­tracts and op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­new­al or longer-term en­gage­ment.

John said work­ers are em­ployed on con­tracts fund­ed through the Em­ploy­ment Fund, list­ed un­der Vote 52 of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

“These con­tracts are not per­ma­nent and are sub­ject to re­view,” she ex­plained.

She not­ed that con­tract re­newals de­pend on sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing work­er per­for­mance, ad­her­ence to pro­gramme stan­dards, and over­all op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments. While there are no au­to­mat­ic guar­an­tees, the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment is pos­si­ble once those con­di­tions are met.

Her clar­i­fi­ca­tion comes amid height­ened pub­lic con­cern fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) ear­li­er this year amid al­le­ga­tions of fraud, mis­man­age­ment, and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

The shut­down dis­placed thou­sands of work­ers and con­trac­tors and trig­gered a se­ries of le­gal chal­lenges, many of which re­main un­re­solved, in­ten­si­fy­ing scruti­ny of oth­er gov­ern­ment-fund­ed em­ploy­ment ini­tia­tives such as NPUPS.