NFM/CEPEP offer employment to disabled people

Michael Po-tella, Chief Exe-cutive Officer of the National Flour Mills (NFM) stated that the State enterprise will soon be employing one disabled person to fill the vacant position of an inventory clerk. The announcement came yesterday during a press conference at their Wrightson Road office.

Potella said that the decision to hire the differently-abled person was in keeping with an earlier commitment they made at the start of the protests by disabled people outside the NFM compound. Potella went a step further by issuing a challenge to other national companies to follow where they have led in the hiring of disabled people. To support his claim that the NFM has never discriminated against disabled people, present at the conference was staff member and physically disabled Iqbal Mohammed. Mohammed is a Custom Services Super-visor at the company and said that he was very happy and proud to be part of an organisation that has taken the decision to hire another challenged person. When he started with the company 5 years ago, he was on crutches. Mohammed said: “At NFM I had no biasness. In fact, I bravely moved upward. I was never discriminated against and under the health plan, I benefitted.” When asked if the government had mandated the company to hire a disabled person in light of the ongoing protest outside their compound, Potella replied in the negative. He said: “We acted independently in hiring the disabled person.”

Potella then informed the media that he would be meeting with George Daniel, Chairman of the Disabled People International/TT today to personally relay the information. However, less than a couple hours after the conference, some CEPEP contractors approached Daniel and his members to also offer employment to them. One of the contractors, Mac Donald Padmore, said: “It is 52 days now they are here. It is time we get them out of the street.” Padmore, together with Kent Shields of KG Environmental Services, Kenny Brooks and other contractors went to Daniel for the latter to furnish them with names, addresses, qualifications and/or skills of the members of his association to assess how they can be absorbed by the CEPEP companies. Shields said: “We have been paying attention to the disabled people for a while and we are now negotiating with them to try and absorb as much of them as possible.” He added that it was his hope to get every CEPEP contractor in Trinidad and Tobago to employ at least one of them.” There are approximately 100 CEPEP contractors in the country while over 200 disabled people are registered in the association.