Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), which has re­ceived more than $6 bil­lion in pub­lic fund­ing since 2010, is cur­rent­ly fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant scruti­ny due to “alarm­ing rev­e­la­tions” of wide­spread cor­rup­tion and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

A 2013 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port first raised con­cerns, not­ing $266 mil­lion in URP pay­ments lacked prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion or trans­paren­cy. Sub­se­quent in­ter­nal au­dits fur­ther un­cov­ered fic­ti­tious in­voic­es for un­de­liv­ered ma­te­ri­als and job ros­ters list­ing “ghost work­ers.”

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen claims the URP was “sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly hi­jacked” by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for par­ti­san gain, al­leg­ing that state funds were si­phoned to “friends, fam­i­lies, and ac­tivists”.

“It is one of the ar­eas that the PNM used to siphon state funds to the pock­ets of their friends, fam­i­lies, and ac­tivists. It was a to­tal abuse of the pub­lic purse,” Ameen said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Among the claims is that pay­ments were made to the daugh­ter of a se­nior PNM of­fi­cial who is cur­rent­ly study­ing abroad. Ameen al­so stat­ed that out of the $300 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to URP for the cur­rent fis­cal year, $231 mil­lion has al­ready been spent, with a mere $2 mil­lion used for goods and ser­vices. The bulk of the spend­ing, she claimed, went to pay­roll, much of it for em­ploy­ees who nev­er re­port­ed for work, in­clud­ing the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of “ghost gangs”.

“There are per­sons list­ed on month­ly pay­rolls who do not show up. Sev­er­al ghost gangs con­tin­ue to op­er­ate un­der the radar. The ghost doesn’t just stay in the field; it walks right in­to the of­fice,” Ameen added. “The for­mer gov­ern­ment has se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer.”

The URP, ini­tial­ly es­tab­lished to pro­vide short-term em­ploy­ment for the na­tion’s most vul­ner­a­ble, has long been mired in al­le­ga­tions of mis­use.

Be­tween 2015 and 2025, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the pro­gramme shift­ed among sev­er­al min­is­ters, which crit­ics said blurred lines of ac­count­abil­i­ty.

For­mer min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh (who briefly over­saw a URP com­po­nent from 2010-2014), de­nied any knowl­edge of wrong­do­ing dur­ing his tenure.

“No, no, I wasn’t ... I was nev­er aware of any­thing go­ing on at that time,” he told Guardian Me­dia. “We were sim­ply URP So­cial. We did so­cial hous­ing, helped cere­bral pal­sy moth­ers, and ran one or two youth pro­grammes. I would have been there for sev­en months, about 12 years ago.”

How­ev­er, it was dur­ing this pe­ri­od that a Cab­i­net-or­dered in­ter­nal re­view and probes by the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) be­gan.

The find­ings of these en­quiries were nev­er re­leased, and no dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion fol­lowed.

Un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2015 to 2020, Kaz­im Ho­sein, then min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, presided over the pro­gramme. From 2020 to 2024, min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight be­came even more frag­ment­ed, with Faris Al-Rawi, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is each hold­ing par­tial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty through over­lap­ping port­fo­lios.

Ameen has pledged sweep­ing changes, an­nounc­ing plans to re­pur­pose both URP and CEPEP (Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme) in­to per­for­mance-based, sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment pro­grammes.

She dis­missed at­tacks from for­mer PNM min­is­ters, say­ing she would not be dis­tract­ed by at­tempts to de­flect from their own lega­cy of fail­ure.

“I will not be dis­tract­ed by pro­pa­gan­da and lies from those who helped cre­ate the mess we are now clean­ing up,” she said.

Ameen warned that some op­po­si­tion mem­bers rush­ing to de­fend re­cent al­le­ga­tions may not ful­ly un­der­stand “the lev­el of cor­rup­tion their own col­leagues were in­volved in.”

She con­firmed that re­ports would be sub­mit­ted to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Fraud Squad. A meet­ing is sched­uled for Tues­day with the URP Pro­gramme Man­ag­er and the Min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary.

“We are com­mit­ted to em­ploy­ing re­al peo­ple in need of work—not ghost gangs—and to part­ner­ing with oth­er min­istries on mean­ing­ful projects,” Ameen said.

She re­it­er­at­ed that her pri­or­i­ty was restor­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and de­liv­er­ing re­al re­lief through the URP.