MORE URP WORKERS TERMINATED

CCNTV6

Unemployment Relief Programme Workers across several regions were given termination notices today, as the government continues what it says is restructuring of make-work programmes. Minister Khadijah Ameen says the process will weed out corruption and allow for the creation of meaningful employment. Rynessa Cutting has more.

Transcript

00:00Scores of URP workers at the administrative level were sent home today, joining the daily paid labourers who were sent home several weeks ago.

00:10Letters dated September 4th were distributed to a number of workers today saying,

00:15As you are aware, in accordance with the terms of your employment, your appointment can be terminated at short notice.

00:23Accordingly, it is with deep regret that I inform you of the immediate termination of your appointment.

00:28It should be noted that you will be paid one month's salary in lieu of notice, end quote.

00:34A source at URP tells TV6 News, roughly 6,000 labourers would have been the first to be sent home,

00:42followed by some programme and deputy programme managers and regional managers,

00:47with clerical assistants, coordinators and other support staff receiving letters today.

00:53Contacted for comment, Minister of Rural Development and local government Khadija Amin.

00:58confirmed the terminations.

01:00We did not callously terminate people immediately as government changed,

01:05even though that has been the tradition and the norm and that was what the PNM did.

01:09Since winning the election, it has been five months and as the Prime Minister indicated,

01:14we are looking at restructuring these programmes.

01:18So while we allow the workers to continue, as we go more advanced into the restructuring,

01:25those persons are now being terminated.

01:28When the PNM took office, they terminated the URP workers immediately, the very week they won the election,

01:35but we chose not to do that.

01:37So yes, people are being terminated, but what you will have is more meaningful employment being created,

01:45people having better paying jobs, as well as in terms of the type of work that they are doing,

01:52will be contributing to society in a bigger way.

01:56The Minister stresses that the restructuring process will weed out deep-rooted corruption in the programme.

02:02Many of the PNM MPs facilitated those ghost gangs.

02:07They facilitated the corruption.

02:09There was a senior URP employee at the head office whose daughter is a student at Mona Campus in Jamaica,

02:17who was in Jamaica and receiving a salary for an office position that she did not report to.

02:25So all this blatant corruption under the PNM has to be removed for that money to be used for meaningful employment.

02:36Runa Sikating, TV6 News.

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