Ghosts in URP not only now

THE EDITOR: Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) jobs were designed as a temporary work for our very poor and underprivileged, until they could do better for themselves and their families.

But, over the years, those in charge of creating URP crews and collecting monies with which to pay URP workers, paid little to them and pocketed the majority of the money for themselves.

The workers were bullied and intimidated by internal and external forces, and most names on the roster were fake or "ghost workers," as the politicians call them. These people never came to work at all but got paid! Some of their relatives studied in university thanks to this ghost employment.

It's not now that ghosts haunt the URP.

Years ago, I was told by many housewives that their housemaids would come in late to work daily as they first had to go to the URP office every morning to "sign in," and they left their maid's job early every afternoon, to go in once again at the URP office, to "sign out," as having worked in the programme that day.

But they never did a day's work at URP, they collected the URP salary though all the while, mopping and cleaning their legitimate employer's house!

TT's children would have grown up observing all this deceit and fraud and no doubt their bad behaviour in schools is probably a result of them witnessing this dishonesty planned and formed in their own homes and environment by their parents and adult friends.

PARICIA BLADES

Cocorite,