Just over 1,800 work­ers have been em­ployed by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture fol­low­ing the na­tion­al re­cruit­ment dri­ve launched in Oc­to­ber, as the Gov­ern­ment moves to strength­en field op­er­a­tions and ac­cel­er­ate main­te­nance work across the coun­try.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said the new­ly re­cruit­ed work­ers have been strate­gi­cal­ly de­ployed to ar­eas re­quir­ing im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly high­way main­te­nance, veg­e­ta­tion con­trol and drainage prepa­ra­tion ahead of the up­com­ing rainy sea­son.

“At this stage, I am sat­is­fied with the ini­tial out­comes of the pro­gramme,” John said. “This first phase has fo­cused on en­sur­ing work­ers are ori­ent­ed, trained and mo­bilised quick­ly, al­low­ing the on­board­ing process to trans­late in­to vis­i­ble ac­tion on the ground, which is the in­tend­ed out­come.”