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Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen is ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of seek­ing to de­fend al­leged cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­i­ty that the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to root out of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

On Wednes­day, the gov­ern­ment is­sued 400 ter­mi­na­tion let­ters to month­ly-paid URP em­ploy­ees, leav­ing 700 work­ers on its pay­roll.

De­fend­ing the move, Ameen said, “The ini­tial au­dit re­ports from the URP in­di­cate not on­ly a pro­lif­er­a­tion of ghost gangs, but al­so ghost em­ploy­ees, month­ly-paid of­fi­cers with­in var­i­ous of­fices, even the head of­fice, and the crim­i­nal el­e­ment own­ing gangs, re­ceiv­ing thou­sands of dol­lars every fort­night. That is a se­ri­ous con­cern.”