KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says the On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) Pro­gramme has been op­er­at­ing on “au­topi­lot” for years, with sev­er­al key po­si­tions va­cant, in­clud­ing those of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ex­am­i­na­tion of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties’ 2027 bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions, Padarath said the min­istry was re­view­ing the pro­gramme’s op­er­a­tions af­ter re­cent­ly as­sum­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it.

“Mem­ber, you would be quite sur­prised to know that our re­search has found in the last sev­en years, at least sev­en years, that a num­ber of these va­can­cies have not been met and the OJT pro­gramme re­al­ly has been run­ning on au­topi­lot,” he said.

Padarath said on­ly 62 of the pro­gramme’s 85 con­tract po­si­tions were filled, leav­ing 23 va­can­cies.

He con­firmed that the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor posts were va­cant and said both would be ad­ver­tised and filled as soon as pos­si­ble.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, those two po­si­tions will have to be ad­ver­tised and be filled in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so raised con­cerns about the con­di­tion of the pro­gramme’s fa­cil­i­ties, claim­ing that em­ploy­ees had been work­ing from 8 am to 11 am be­fore leav­ing be­cause of the con­di­tions.

“The fa­cil­i­ties there are in a com­plete mess,” he said.

Padarath said the min­istry was work­ing with the Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS) to im­prove the fa­cil­i­ties and ad­dress staffing is­sues so the pro­gramme could op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly.

He al­so said the pro­gramme’s ap­pli­ca­tion process re­mained heav­i­ly re­liant on pa­per­work, with mil­lions of dol­lars re­port­ed­ly spent each year to store ap­pli­ca­tion forms.

“The Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary ad­vised me when it came un­der the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties that OJT is pay­ing some­thing like $2M to $3M an­nu­al­ly to rent a 20-foot con­tain­er to house all these ap­pli­ca­tion forms. I will not go in­to the de­tails to tell you who owns this 20-foot con­tain­er to get $2M to $3M an­nu­al­ly,” Padarath said.

He said the con­tain­er had reached ca­pac­i­ty and that some ap­pli­ca­tions had been on file for more than five years.

The min­istry plans to work with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion to digi­tise the ap­pli­ca­tion process and in­tro­duce a more ef­fi­cient sys­tem for young peo­ple seek­ing place­ments, Padarath said. Ap­pli­ca­tions more than five years old would al­so have to be up­dat­ed through a re-reg­is­tra­tion process.

Mean­while, Padarath said just over 4,000 trainees were en­rolled in the pro­gramme.