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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.