KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has de­nied claims by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis, that it is po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­tim­is­ing work­ers.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Den­nis ac­cused the Far­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion of hav­ing no valid rea­son for not re­new­ing con­tracts.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, THA Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary and Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, Dr Faith B Yis­rael, said these claims were false.

B Yis­rael said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion was sim­ply fol­low­ing hu­man re­source pro­to­cols that were al­ready in place.

She said, “It is clear that Mr Den­nis has an agen­da, which he is al­lowed to do, but we have been fol­low­ing all of the pro­to­cols, all of the process­es that are ap­proved in the THA.

“We are us­ing the process­es that are ap­proved and these are not the process­es that we de­vel­oped. We came in­to the THA in De­cem­ber 2021 and we have been us­ing, in essence, the same HR process­es as we found in the THA.”

The Health Sec­re­tary added that the ap­proval of con­tracts for work­ers de­pends on the type of con­tract.

She said the re­new­al or ap­proval of a new con­tract can ei­ther go to the Sec­re­tary lead­ing the de­part­ment or to the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil, where Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is a mem­ber, for ap­proval.

Al­so re­spond­ing to claims made by Den­nis in ref­er­ence to a con­tract for a graph­ic de­sign­er, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he was not the one re­spon­si­ble for not re­new­ing the con­tract.

Au­gus­tine said, “I am not the Sec­re­tary of Health and there­fore I don’t have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­sid­er a re­new­al or not.”