Nepotism in URP Manzanilla

THE EDITOR: Over the past few years, I and many other people from the Manzanilla community have sat down and watched the jobs in our area pass around from one family member to another. I find this disgusting, hurtful and unfair. We all supported Mr Boynes, we campaigned here, there and everywhere with him, and we voted. Why should one family or one batch of friends alone benefit from everyone’s hard work?

A worker at the Unemployment Relief Office (URP) Eastern Main Road, Guaico, Sangre Grande is the one in charge of sending down the names of the ten days projects. Believe me when I say she has an easy job, because it’s one set of names over and over again. Examples are her daughter, her son, her daughter-in-law, her nephews, her niece and her closest friends. Every fortnight you could be sure that these people are employed in some gang, they juggle from one to the other. How could this ever be right? Other people need jobs too. If someone else makes out a list, she scratches the names she doesn’t want and puts in her people.

Is my constituency made up of them alone? Are they the only PNM people behind Mr Boynes? I love my party, but with these every fortnight workers alone, could PNM ever regain their seat in this constituency in any upcoming election? I don’t know what it is that these unqualified women do or use to hold the power they hold in the URP office, but they certainly run things. They have no qualifications, but hold big jobs. Then at election time, they’ll come around Manzanilla to beg and use the youths again.

MARILYN BASCOMBE
Manzanilla