National Recruitment Drive falls short: 20,000 jobs promised, 1,801 people hired

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

On Oc­to­ber 19, 2025, the Gov­ern­ment launched a Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve and pro­mot­ed a new on­line hir­ing plat­form un­der the Em­ployTT do­main.

At the time, the Prime Min­is­ter pub­licly an­nounced that the ini­tia­tive would pro­vide more than 20,000 job op­por­tu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go and asked cit­i­zens to reg­is­ter on­line and up­load ré­sumés, or vis­it phys­i­cal reg­is­tra­tion hubs for as­sis­tance.

The re­sponse was im­me­di­ate. With­in hours of the web­site be­ing launched, 30,000 ap­plied.

At the end of the Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve, a to­tal of 110,000 peo­ple ap­plied for jobs on­line or in per­son at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre.

Four months lat­er, many who ap­plied have not been called to work.

To date, the Gov­ern­ment has not pub­licly re­leased a con­sol­i­dat­ed na­tion­al fig­ure show­ing how many ap­pli­cants were hired across the min­istries.

Of the 30,000 peo­ple who ap­plied for jobs from the Gov­ern­ment through Em­ployTT, on­ly 1,801 have since been hired by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

That is rough­ly six per cent.

That fig­ure al­so amounts to about nine per cent of the 20,000 jobs promised by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

But the Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lean John, who has to date been the on­ly min­is­ter to go on the record about the out­comes from the re­cruit­ment dri­ve, said there will be an­oth­er batch of re­cruit­ment in the com­ing days.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, John said that the Cab­i­net ap­proved the en­gage­ment of 1,801 ca­su­al work­ers at the min­istry through the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the work­ers were hired on three-month con­tracts, with re­new­al op­tion­al based on per­for­mance and re­quire­ments from the min­istry, and are paid through the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Em­ploy­ment Fund.

“These work­ers have been on the ground since De­cem­ber 2025, strength­en­ing our field op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas re­quir­ing ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion,” John’s state­ment said.

John said that from March 1, 2026, an ad­di­tion­al 800 peo­ple are ex­pect­ed “to be en­gaged to fur­ther strength­en the ex­ist­ing teams and ex­pand the scale and pace of work across Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The min­is­ter said works were vis­i­ble across the coun­try and crews were op­er­at­ing dur­ing the day and at night “to max­imise out­put while min­imis­ing dis­rup­tion to the trav­el­ling pub­lic.”

The state­ment list­ed lo­ca­tions where work­ers were de­ployed, in­clud­ing Grand Bazaar In­ter­change, Pi­ar­co In­ter­sec­tion, Uri­ah/But­ler High­way, Churchill/Roo­sevelt High­way, Diego Mar­tin High­way and Beetham High­way. (See map)

John said the scope in­clud­ed “pow­er wash­ing, grass cut­ting, veg­e­ta­tion con­trol, drainage clean­ing, and crit­i­cal flood mit­i­ga­tion prepara­to­ry works along the Ca­roni and San Juan Rivers as we pre­pare for the rainy sea­son.”

She added that op­er­a­tions were on­go­ing in Gol­con­da and the Works Min­istry was prepar­ing to com­mence works in Gand­hi Vil­lage, along the West­ern Main Road, as well as the Uri­ah But­ler High­way be­tween Mount Hope, Grand Bazaar and the Ca­roni area.

She pro­vid­ed clar­i­ty re­gard­ing pay­ment, say­ing that the pro­gramme was be­ing fund­ed un­der the Em­ploy­ment Fund, Min­istry of Fi­nance, with pay­ments ex­e­cut­ed via Vote: Head 69, Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Sub­head 04, Cur­rent Trans­fers and Sub­si­dies, Item 009, Oth­er Trans­fers, Subitem 09, Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve. (See ta­ble)

“This is a whole-of-gov­ern­ment pro­gramme, and key min­istries such as the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries have been at the fore­front of en­gage­ment of work­ers. Re­cruit­ment across the wider State sec­tor is on­go­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis,” she said.

The Gov­ern­ment had said the dri­ve would be rolled out in phas­es, first fo­cus­ing on pub­lic-sec­tor va­can­cies, then in­volv­ing pri­vate em­ploy­ers.

Weeks af­ter the Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve, dur­ing the 2026 Bud­get pe­ri­od, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo linked the ini­tia­tive to a broad­er labour shift.

He an­nounced a $475 mil­lion Em­ploy­ment Fund and ref­er­enced an ad­di­tion­al $310 mil­lion Un­em­ploy­ment Fund in­tend­ed to sup­port job cre­ation, while not­ing that pro­grammes such as CEPEP and URP would tran­si­tion to­wards per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve was framed as part of that tran­si­tion.

Guardian Me­dia asked Tan­coo how much of the $475 mil­lion Em­ploy­ment Fund had been spent, where pay­ments were record­ed, whether per­son­al emol­u­ments had in­creased, whether work­ers were treat­ed as em­ploy­ees or con­trac­tors, and the es­ti­mat­ed an­nu­al cost.

Tan­coo replied: “I don’t have that kind of in­for­ma­tion at my dis­pos­al at this time.”

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter did not re­spond to fur­ther ques­tions sent to him on the mat­ter.

Last Fri­day, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith made a dis­tinc­tion, which has nev­er been made be­fore, be­tween Em­ployTT and the Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve.

He said the plat­form and the re­cruit­ment dri­ve were not the same thing.

Guardian Me­dia had reached out to

Con­tin­ues on page 7

Smith’s min­istry in an at­tempt to ac­cess op­er­a­tional da­ta on the Em­ployTT plat­form, in­clud­ing the num­ber of peo­ple reg­is­tered, short­list­ed, in­ter­viewed and hired through the sys­tem, which min­istries used it for re­cruit­ment, whether the plat­form it­self gen­er­ates jobs or on­ly process­es ap­pli­ca­tions, the typ­i­cal con­tract du­ra­tion for place­ments, and whether salary ranges are record­ed with­in the sys­tem.

In re­sponse, Smith said, “I can com­mit to pro­vid­ing some of the in­for­ma­tion. But please note that Em­ployTT is not the same as the re­cruit­ment dri­ve. It was fa­cil­i­tat­ed us­ing the Em­ployTT do­main, but the re­cruit­ment dri­ve was a sep­a­rate item al­to­geth­er.”

Af­ter the pro­gramme start­ed, ques­tions arose about whether min­istries could hire work­ers out­side the tra­di­tion­al pub­lic ser­vice ap­point­ment process.

On Oc­to­ber 26 last year, for­mer chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Win­ston Rud­der said the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve was law­ful be­cause min­istries were of­fer­ing con­tract po­si­tions, not es­tab­lished pub­lic-ser­vice posts, ex­plain­ing that

That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters be­cause it means re­cruit­ment out­comes can in­crease short-term en­gage­ments with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly ex­pand­ing the per­ma­nent pub­lic-ser­vice es­tab­lish­ment. Min­istries nor­mal­ly ad­ver­tise con­tract jobs out­side the com­mis­sion’s per­ma­nent ap­point­ment process.

The Em­ployTT terms and con­di­tions de­scribe the plat­form as an ap­pli­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion ser­vice.

Users cre­ate pro­files, up­load doc­u­ments and sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions. Min­istries or agen­cies de­cide whether to short­list or hire. The terms state there is no guar­an­tee of in­ter­views, place­ment or em­ploy­ment out­comes, and user ac­counts can be sus­pend­ed for in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion.

The pri­va­cy no­tice states that per­son­al da­ta is stored by iGovTT and shared with par­tic­i­pat­ing em­ploy­ers for re­cruit­ment pur­pos­es.

In prac­tice, that means reg­is­tra­tion on Em­ployTT does not amount to a job of­fer.

An iGovTT source, who asked not to be named, said the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve was not run through the nor­mal Em­ployTT sys­tem, even though the pub­lic ac­cessed it through the same web ad­dress.

The source ex­plained that Em­ployTT has ex­ist­ed since around the COVID-19 pe­ri­od as a stand­ing gov­ern­ment va­can­cy list­ing ser­vice where in­di­vid­ual min­istries vol­un­tar­i­ly post their own jobs. iGovTT on­ly main­tains the web­site and pro­vides the in­ter­face; it does not de­cide what jobs are ad­ver­tised or who gets hired, and not every min­istry us­es it.

For the re­cruit­ment dri­ve, the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to quick­ly gath­er va­can­cies across min­istries with­out first on­board­ing all agen­cies in­to the ex­ist­ing sys­tem. A sep­a­rate re­cruit­ment page was cre­at­ed us­ing the Em­ployTT do­main so the pub­lic would have a sin­gle place to reg­is­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, iGovTT built the front-end web­page but did not run the re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise, track ap­pli­cants or man­age hir­ing out­comes. The ac­tu­al re­cruit­ment process was han­dled by min­istries and pro­gramme ad­min­is­tra­tors out­side the reg­u­lar Em­ployTT va­can­cy list­ing ser­vice.

Ques­tions to iGovTT’s act­ing CEO Charles Bobb-Sem­ple, via email, were not ac­knowl­edged up to pub­li­ca­tion time.

Em­ployTT re­quires users to cre­ate ac­counts, up­load CVs and ap­ply for list­ed va­can­cies.

Job post­ings car­ry dead­lines, and the list­ings are large­ly con­tract-based.

Ap­pli­cants al­so re­port­ed, in the com­ment sec­tions un­der two Em­ployTT posts on so­cial me­dia, tech­ni­cal prob­lems dur­ing the ini­tial push.

Peo­ple said the plat­form was “not work­ing” and they “can’t sub­mit,” while oth­ers said that at the fi­nal stage, it kept show­ing “er­ror.”

Some users said they were “not be­ing able to sub­mit” and “not get­ting through.”

In the same pub­lic thread, oth­er suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants ad­vised oth­ers to en­sure their ré­sumé was in PDF for­mat and to try again when the site was “not too busy.”

Oth­ers di­rect­ed ap­pli­cants to go in per­son to the Cy­cling Cen­tre in Cou­va from Oc­to­ber 19 to 24, 2025.

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­ceived di­rect feed­back from at least one ap­pli­cant, who asked not to be named.

On Face­book Mes­sen­ger with Guardian Me­dia, the ap­pli­cant said he nev­er re­ceived a re­sponse af­ter ap­ply­ing.

Asked whether he was ever con­tact­ed, the ap­pli­cant said: “No an­swer.”

Asked whether he fol­lowed up, the ap­pli­cant said: “Not since Jan­u­ary.”

He added: “No replies.”

The ap­pli­cant al­so said he was still “job search­ing.”

He did not re­spond to fol­low-up ques­tions.

To test the sys­tem, Guardian Me­dia cre­at­ed an ac­count and en­tered the re­quired in­for­ma­tion.

How­ev­er, the process was abort­ed be­fore the fi­nal sub­mis­sion stage, where users re­port­ed is­sues be­cause, at that point, the por­tal asked for a Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter, which re­quires time to ob­tain. Up to that point, it worked smooth­ly.

As of last Fri­day morn­ing, Em­ployTT and the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions va­can­cy sys­tem were run­ning side by side and ad­ver­tis­ing dif­fer­ent types of work.

Em­ployTT Por­tal Con­tract / Tem­po­rary 22 Pro­fes­sion­al and tech­ni­cal roles

Ser­vice Com­mis­sions Per­ma­nent Pub­lic Ser­vice 5 Pen­sion­able pub­lic-ser­vice posts