Self Help Commission axes contract workers in restructuring exercise

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Con­tract­ed work­ers at the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help Lim­it­ed (NC­SHL) are qui­et­ly be­ing sent home in small batch­es through the non-re­new­al of con­tracts.

Em­ploy­ees are be­ing told it’s part of a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, ac­cord­ing to a source and ter­mi­na­tion let­ters ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia

How­ev­er, sources in the or­gan­i­sa­tion claim that pref­er­en­tial treat­ment is be­ing giv­en to work­ers who were hired af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tions.

Those work­ers, they claimed, are be­ing kept on in favour of peo­ple who have been at the or­gan­i­sa­tion for the past 20 years.

A to­tal of 53 peo­ple are em­ployed at the com­mis­sion. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at least four em­ploy­ees have al­ready re­ceived let­ters last week, with ad­di­tion­al work­ers to be af­fect­ed as con­tracts ex­pire across June, Ju­ly and Au­gust.

One of the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters dat­ed June 5, 2026, stat­ed that the em­ploy­ee’s con­tract would not be re­newed due to the com­pa­ny’s re­struc­tur­ing. The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that the em­ploy­ee’s em­ploy­ment end­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and in­struct­ed the work­er not to re­port for du­ty from June 8.

It al­so not­ed that the em­ploy­ee re­port­ed for du­ty for 20 days be­yond the con­tract­ed pe­ri­od.

The ter­mi­na­tion let­ter re­viewed by Guardian Me­dia al­so stat­ed that per­son­al items be­long­ing to the em­ploy­ee would be re­turned at a mu­tu­al­ly con­ve­nient time.

The Com­mis­sion, which falls un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, is al­lo­cat­ed $25 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

It was placed un­der OPM last year to en­sure that ur­gent fi­nan­cial, le­gal, and op­er­a­tional mat­ters—stem­ming from grave mil­lion-dol­lar chal­lenges found at the com­mis­sion, ac­cord­ing to Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin dru­ing a news con­fer­ence then.

A source told Guardian Me­dia that the lat­est round of non-re­newals over the past two weeks came with­out pri­or no­tice to em­ploy­ees.

The source ex­plained that the process is oc­cur­ring in phas­es rather than through a sin­gle ex­er­cise. An­oth­er source es­ti­mat­ed that up to ten em­ploy­ees have been af­fect­ed in the first phase.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that sev­er­al em­ploy­ees con­tin­ued re­port­ing to work af­ter their con­tracts ex­pired and were not in­formed that their em­ploy­ment would not be re­newed un­til they re­ceived let­ters.

“These peo­ple have been com­ing to work and sit down there for weeks. And now get these let­ters,” a source said.

Guardian Me­dia was told the “con­tracts would have ex­pired some time ago” and were not re­newed.

The work­ers con­tin­ued to work “day to day, month to month,” the source claimed.

The source said em­ploy­ees were not in­formed be­fore­hand that a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise was un­der­way.

Work­ers claimed that they had been blind­sided as they had not been in­formed of a new or­gan­i­sa­tion chart for the com­pa­ny or a new strate­gic plan.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the last strate­gic plan was done in 2022, and the com­mis­sion’s last ap­proved or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart dates back to 2014. A source with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion said no staff meet­ings were held be­fore let­ters were is­sued.

“They nev­er did. They just gave let­ters.”

The source ob­served that some em­ploy­ees hired on short-term con­tracts re­main at the or­gan­i­sa­tion, with at least one of those ap­point­ments be­ing at the mid­dle-man­age­ment lev­el.

“Those short-term peo­ple are peo­ple who they would have brought in, while peo­ple with 20 years in the com­mis­sion are go­ing home.”

Guardian Me­dia spoke with two mem­bers of the NC­SHL board off the record, seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise and the con­tract non-re­newals.

Both di­rec­tors said they had no knowl­edge of the non-re­new­al let­ters or any re­struc­tur­ing process be­ing car­ried out at the com­mis­sion.

But oth­er work­ers, who are still await­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion on their fate this week, were adamant that the board is ful­ly aware of the de­ci­sion tak­en on their fu­ture with the com­mis­sion.

The NC­SL op­er­ates of­fices in Port-of-Spain, Mara­bel­la and To­ba­go and pro­vides com­mu­ni­ty as­sis­tance pro­grammes.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed NC­SL CEO Lester Leu on the num­ber of em­ploy­ees ex­pect­ed to be af­fect­ed by the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise. Leu said he was busy and could not give a com­ment or pro­vide fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the re­cruit­ment and re­struc­tur­ing process at the time.

The Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self Help Lim­it­ed (NC­SHL) was es­tab­lished by Cab­i­net on April 7, 1987, dur­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of for­mer prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son. It was cre­at­ed to in­sti­tu­tion­alise the self-help con­cept and en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ties to be­come ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in im­prov­ing their own liv­ing con­di­tions. The or­gan­i­sa­tion was lat­er reg­is­tered as a state-owned com­pa­ny on April 14, 1997.

The NC­SHL is a non-prof­it state en­ter­prise fo­cused on pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment. Its man­date is to pro­mote self-help and self-re­liance by as­sist­ing in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties with hous­ing re­pairs and com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture projects.

Self Help’s work in­cludes:

* Pro­vid­ing grants for mi­nor home re­pairs and re­con­struc­tion.

* As­sist­ing fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by fires, floods and oth­er dis­as­ters.

* Sup­port­ing se­nior cit­i­zens, low-in­come house­holds, sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies, so­cial­ly dis­placed per­sons and peo­ple re­ceiv­ing pub­lic as­sis­tance.

* Fund­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing com­mu­ni­ty projects such as roads, drains, foot­paths and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture.

CEPEP 10,500 work­ers and rough­ly 360 con­trac­tors ter­mi­nat­ed on June 27, 2025

Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme Es­ti­mat­ed 4,608 work­ers and con­trac­tors ter­mi­nat­ed short­ly af­ter CEPEP dis­missals

URP con­trac­tors (re­port­ed in Par­lia­ment) 400 work­ers and 928 con­tract work­ers ter­mi­nat­ed as part of the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise Sep­tem­ber 2025