Moonilal: Unemployment is 11.2 percent

Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Moonilal has accused the Government of “hypocrisy and deception” with its announcement that the unemployment rate is at 7.8 per cent, the lowest in the country’s history. Moonilal was speaking during the Budget debate in the House of Representatives last week. He noted that the unemployment figure was inflated and was the result of “dumping in the labour market of hordes of make-work, temporary, low-skill, low-wage employees via the Government special work programmes.”

Noting that these programmes were included in the employment date, Moonilal said when one factored out the OJT (10,000); GAPP (200); URP (10,000); CEPEP (5,000); HYPE (400), Civilian Conservation Corps (400) and YAPA (2,000), the real official unemployment rate was 11.2 percent. “The Prime Minister presented therefore a pace-maker employment rate — one that is artificially regulated,” the UNC MP stated. He said there was a dramatic discrepancy between the CSO data and the figures for new workers from the National Insurance Scheme, which recorded only 30,627 new workers for the period 2003-2004.

Moonilal also noted that NIS registered only 2,062 new businesses, which was the same figure given by NEDCO for new businesses. “This means,” said Moonilal, “that NEDCO created all the new “employers” not the private sector”. Moonilal told Prime Minister Patrick Manning that after spending over 30 years in public life, his legacy would be that of a Prime Minister who “enslaved” the people through CEPEP and ten-day work programmes. By contrast, Moonilal contended, the UNC had created over 75,000 new sustainable jobs in the 1995-2001 period without using ten day make-work programmes.