Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With more than a decade of ser­vice at the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), a 55-year-old sin­gle moth­er was among hun­dreds of work­ers left in tears yes­ter­day, af­ter they were giv­en ter­mi­na­tion let­ters.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, the woman said she was among 14 ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers from URP Re­gion #8, which op­er­at­ed in Re­trench Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do.

“It was just un­ex­pect­ed, which I find was dis­taste­ful. Every­body was sad, cry­ing be­cause no­body was ex­pect­ing that now. It’s near­ly the end­ing of the year, Christ­mas around the cor­ner,” she lament­ed.

The URP let­ters of ter­mi­na­tion were is­sued by the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and signed by the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Pe­ter Mitchell.

It stat­ed: “As you are aware, in ac­cor­dance with the terms of your em­ploy­ment, your ap­point­ment can be ter­mi­nat­ed by ei­ther par­ty at short no­tice. Ac­cord­ing­ly, it is with deep re­gret that I in­form you of the im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of your em­ploy­ment as (po­si­tion) in Re­gion #8 San Fer­nan­do Re­gion in the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme.”

It was not­ed that the em­ploy­ee would be paid one month’s salary in lieu of no­tice.

The work­er was con­cerned about how they were go­ing to con­tin­ue to put food on the ta­ble, main­tain their fam­i­lies, and meet their fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments.

“You said that how when UNC wins, every­body wins. Re­mem­ber, peo­ple have mort­gage. We have loans. We have bills to pay and every­thing like that. Un­ex­pect­ed­ly, all yuh just hand us a let­ter. On top of that, you tell us if we want, we can reap­ply back.”

How­ev­er, she did not think that would make sense based on false promis­es to Com­mu­ni­ty Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers that they would have been re­hired.

The woman, who has a daugh­ter at­tend­ing sec­ondary school, not­ed that most of the work­ers in URP, CEPEP, and the Forestry Di­vi­sion who were ter­mi­nat­ed in the past months are sin­gle par­ents.

“Who help­ing us? I want them to an­swer that, Min­is­ter (Bar­ry) Padarath, an­swer that.”

In south, in­clud­ing the URP of­fices in San Fer­nan­do West and Pointe-a-Pierre, more than 50 work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning, in whose con­stituen­cy Re­gion #8 is sit­u­at­ed, said sev­er­al up­set work­ers con­tact­ed him and oth­er au­thor­i­ties seek­ing their in­ter­ven­tion. Man­ning, who in­tends to host a press con­fer­ence with sev­er­al of the URP work­ers at his of­fice to­day, de­scribed their ter­mi­na­tions as cal­lous and un­car­ing.

“We be­lieve that San Fer­nan­do, San Fer­nan­do East in par­tic­u­lar, is re­al­ly be­ing vic­timised by this Gov­ern­ment. It is cal­lous and un­car­ing for this UNC Gov­ern­ment to wait un­til the open­ing of the new school term to send peo­ple home who have chil­dren in school, who need sup­plies, who need uni­forms, and so on. It is cal­lous and un­car­ing, and we be­lieve that the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do East are be­ing vic­timised by this Gov­ern­ment, and it’s some­thing that we are not go­ing to stand for or tol­er­ate.”

He added that it was “com­plete­ly and ut­ter­ly ridicu­lous.”

In Ju­ly, the Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed sev­er­al CEPEP, URP, and Forestry Di­vi­sion con­tracts as part of its an­ti-cor­rup­tion ini­tia­tive. This re­sult­ed in thou­sands of work­ers be­ing thrown on the bread­line.