Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has de­fend­ed the dis­missal of 400 Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers, say­ing the Op­po­si­tion has no moral au­thor­i­ty to crit­i­cise the move.

In a post on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, Tan­coo wrote, “Re­minder: in 2015 when PNM won elec­tions, URP work­ers, ALL, were LOCKED OUT of of­fices and IM­ME­DI­ATE­LY FIRED—no ex­pla­na­tion, no no­tice & not a cent—by the same PNM that is pre­tend­ing to care for work­ers to­day.”

Tan­coo did not give any fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion as to why the work­ers were fired; or if there was a fi­nan­cial com­po­nent.

The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion was con­firmed on Wednes­day by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, who re­ject­ed claims the ter­mi­na­tions were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. Ameen said past gov­ern­ments had rou­tine­ly fired all URP work­ers af­ter elec­tions, but this ad­min­is­tra­tion had not done so.

“Quite frankly, if we op­er­at­ed like the PNM, all of those peo­ple would have been sent home as soon as the elec­tion was fin­ished. We did not do that. So, we are not vic­tim­is­ing any­one,” Ameen said.

She added that au­dits un­cov­ered wide­spread ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, in­clud­ing ghost gangs and em­ploy­ees paid de­spite not show­ing up to work.

But at a meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin on Wednes­day night, for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing every day brings a new sto­ry of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, in­clud­ing salaries be­ing paid late or not at all, de­duc­tions not be­ing made, stand­ing or­ders not processed, al­lowances with­held, and thou­sands of re­trench­ments.

He added that bills and sup­pli­ers are go­ing un­paid be­cause the Gov­ern­ment is strug­gling, at­tribut­ing part of the prob­lem to “far too many fool­ish promis­es” that could nev­er be kept.

Im­bert con­trast­ed this with the PNM’s ap­proach, not­ing that when his par­ty re­turned to gov­ern­ment in 2015, it fo­cused on grow­ing rev­enue and de­liv­er­ing on its man­i­festo com­mit­ments, such as re­duc­ing VAT to 12.5 per cent and in­creas­ing the per­son­al al­lowance.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ac­cused the UNC of hypocrisy. She told sup­port­ers that in ad­di­tion to the 400 URP work­ers now dis­missed, more than 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors had been re­moved ear­li­er this year.

Beck­les re­called that when the PNM took of­fice in 2015, it re­tained CEPEP con­trac­tors and work­ers de­spite their late en­try un­der the then UNC gov­ern­ment.

“And I won­der if you all know that the PNM ho­n­oured those con­trac­tors. We didn’t change not one of them. We kept the em­ploy­ees. We kept the con­trac­tors. They come in­to of­fice now in 2025 and they have short mem­o­ries and they get rid of not on­ly the con­trac­tors that came in re­cent­ly but even those that were there be­fore.”

Turn­ing to Wednes­day’s URP ter­mi­na­tions, Beck­les said work­ers in all 12 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions were af­fect­ed, in­clud­ing 51 in Ari­ma alone.

The Gov­ern­ment has main­tained the cuts are part of ef­forts to ad­dress fraud and mis­man­age­ment in state pro­grammes, while the Op­po­si­tion has de­scribed them as heart­less and un­jus­ti­fied.