With 400 more low-in­come work­ers on the bread­line, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning says Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lawyers will take the Gov­ern­ment to court over what he de­scribed as the “un­just” dis­missal of Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence fol­low­ing a meet­ing with for­mer month­ly-paid URP em­ploy­ees at his Navet Road con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Man­ning said the PNM will not sit idly for five years and al­low Gov­ern­ment’s vic­tim­i­sa­tion to con­tin­ue. He in­sist­ed work­ers’ rights were be­ing vi­o­lat­ed and ex­pressed con­fi­dence they would get favourable judg­ments in court. He al­so warned that more dis­missals could fol­low, with the URP’s women’s pro­gramme pos­si­bly the next tar­get.

On Wednes­day, the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 em­ploy­ees across 12 re­gion­al of­fices. Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said the move was part of a re­struc­tur­ing ef­fort to elim­i­nate long­stand­ing cor­rup­tion, in­clud­ing “ghost gangs” and in­di­vid­u­als who were paid with­out work­ing. She main­tained that the ini­tia­tive was not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, but nec­es­sary to re­store in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Man­ning, how­ev­er, ac­cused the min­istry of tar­get­ing his con­stituen­cy.

“Every month­ly-paid URP work­er in San Fer­nan­do East was fired from the pro­gramme,” he said.

“We are go­ing to re­fer these work­ers here, along with oth­ers who de­cide to sign up with the PNM at­tor­ney, so that they can take this mat­ter to court. In the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, you can­not fire peo­ple with­out cause, and no cause was giv­en for the re­moval of these hard work­ing, hon­est peo­ple.”

The for­mer URP work­ers will join dis­missed CEPEP and re­for­esta­tion work­ers be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by PNM at­tor­neys. Man­ning said he could not un­der­stand why em­ploy­ees who turned up every day to work were fired for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons.

He al­so crit­i­cised Ameen’s re­peat­ed ref­er­ences to “ghost gangs”.

“The min­is­ter cal­lous­ly wait­ed un­til the be­gin­ning of the new school term to send peo­ple home with­out a care in the world for how they are go­ing to take care of their chil­dren, pay for them to com­plete school, or how they are go­ing to take care of their fam­i­lies. Many of the em­ploy­ees in the URP and CEPEP pro­grammes were, un­for­tu­nate­ly, un­skilled sin­gle moth­ers, some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and this Gov­ern­ment and Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment sim­ply do not care about how these peo­ple are go­ing to make a liv­ing.”

Ex­pect­ing work­ers to re­main un­em­ployed for months, Man­ning pre­dict­ed the State would still bear the cost, as many sin­gle par­ents will turn to the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial Wel­fare for help.

He added that re­struc­tur­ing could have been done with­out mass lay­offs, point­ing out that when the PNM re­struc­tured the pro­gramme in 2015, no work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed. Man­ning ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to purge PNM sup­port­ers and re­fill CEPEP, URP and the reaf­foresta­tion pro­grammes with Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) loy­al­ists.

He al­so warned that with URP work­ers gone, cit­i­zens could ex­pect a de­cline in com­mu­ni­ty up­keep, sim­i­lar to what fol­lowed the CEPEP dis­missals.

Char­maine Bap­tiste, 55, who worked in URP for more than a decade, said em­ploy­ees now face un­paid bills and mort­gages on Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion homes. A sin­gle moth­er with a daugh­ter in Form Six, she said she still has not com­plet­ed her back-to-school shop­ping.

“What do you want me to do? Pack up our­selves and go to Khadi­jah Ameen’s house and sit down? If we do not pay our mort­gages, HDC is com­ing to slip a let­ter un­der our doors, so how? I will pick up my things with my child, gain­ful­ly, and go and sit down by the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said, ‘when UNC wins, every­body wins,’ which is a to­tal­ly bla­tant lie,” Bap­tiste said.

To Ameen, she added that they are not ghosts and can pinch them­selves and be sure.

Makela Jor­dan, 44, who start­ed work­ing un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­called hear­ing about the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters ar­riv­ing at re­gion­al of­fices.

“We could on­ly wait qui­et­ly as the man­ag­er called our names to hand us our ter­mi­na­tion let­ter,” she said.

Jor­dan added that since the change of gov­ern­ment, salaries had al­so of­ten been de­layed, forc­ing work­ers to pay late fees.

“Cred­i­tors have been con­tact­ing us con­stant­ly, and com­pa­nies do not care that your salaries are ar­riv­ing late,” she said.

While not against re­forms, she ques­tioned why staff at the head of­fice were re­tained, say­ing that was where de­ci­sion-mak­ing took place.