Garcia: No lay offs at Ministry

Education Minister Anthony Garcia yesterday told Newsday it was not a “laying off ” of some contract workers who had completed their one-year, two-year or three-year contracts.

They are now retained on a month to month basis to complete specific assignments.

“Their original contractual period has come to an end.

If it was necessary to retain their services, then we offered them a month-to-month relationship with us,” he said. Garcia’s comments were in response to a former “short term” contract employees who told Newsday in a letter dated July 20 that within the next two weeks about 250 “short term” contract employee will come to an end.

The former contract worker said among those who will be affected are technical officers, school social workers and student support service staff.

Garcia said, “I am not aware of any effort by the ministry to retrench or lay of anybody,” he said. He was not aware, he said, that there were 200 or more employees working on a month to month basis with the ministry.

“It is just a small number.” The former contract employee who said he was retained on a month-to-month basis for the last 14 month said that whenever the “short term” was coming to an end, short term workers would be asked to submit a justification for their retention.

They would then proceed on a three-day break before returning to work.

Recently, he said, “we did our justifications and sent it up. Strangely though we have not been told anything.” He said that when “a couple of us” inquired from the Human Resources Department when they would receive notice of approval, they were told the ministry has no money to pay them and “as such we would not be returning back to work.” He said the administration was not telling them anything and they were experiencing a sense of discomfort.

According to Garcia, “Short term contract are for fixed periods.

When those periods have come to an end.

It means automatically that their contracts have come to an end.”