Kamla threatens to terminate lazy public servants

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has warned pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees who fail to per­form their du­ties that they will be dis­missed and re­placed by peo­ple will­ing to work.

Speak­ing dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the 2027 Bud­get de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment would no longer tol­er­ate poor work ethics and low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty among work­ers paid by tax­pay­ers.

“For those of you work­ing for the state who do not want to give an hon­est day’s work for an hon­est day’s pay, you will be ter­mi­nat­ed, and those jobs will be giv­en to per­sons who want to work. That is plain talk,” she de­clared.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar framed the warn­ing as part of a broad­er ef­fort to re­bal­ance so­ci­ety in favour of work­ing- and mid­dle-class cit­i­zens, whom she said were car­ry­ing the coun­try on their backs. She ar­gued that too many hard­work­ing cit­i­zens were be­ing over­looked while oth­ers ben­e­fit­ed from gov­ern­ment pro­grammes with­out mak­ing mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ties must be based on mer­it, ac­count­abil­i­ty and per­for­mance rather than po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions. She al­so urged state agen­cies to im­prove how they treat cit­i­zens seek­ing hous­ing, so­cial as­sis­tance and oth­er ser­vices.

De­spite her stern mes­sage to un­der­per­form­ing work­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­as­sured pub­lic ser­vants await­ing salary in­creas­es and back­pay that her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mained com­mit­ted to ho­n­our­ing those oblig­a­tions.

She said the 2027 Bud­get in­clud­ed fund­ing for ne­go­ti­at­ed wage set­tle­ments and ar­rears across sev­er­al groups.

“These oblig­a­tions mat­ter be­cause work­ers should not have to spend years won­der­ing when their en­ti­tle­ments will be ad­dressed. We will con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with the trade unions and work­ing to­wards a res­o­lu­tion of out­stand­ing mat­ters,” she said.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not iden­ti­fy any spe­cif­ic union, nor did she in­di­cate when out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions would be con­clud­ed.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced a new ini­tia­tive with Caribbean Air­lines to as­sist chil­dren who must trav­el over­seas for med­ical treat­ment.

Un­der the pro­gramme, the air­line will pro­vide a free seat for a child seek­ing treat­ment abroad and a sec­ond seat for a par­ent or ac­com­pa­ny­ing care­giv­er.

The ini­tia­tive will com­ple­ment as­sis­tance al­ready pro­vid­ed through the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, which sup­ports chil­dren re­quir­ing spe­cialised treat­ment un­avail­able lo­cal­ly.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar thanked Caribbean Air­lines and Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our for help­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the pro­gramme.

Turn­ing to pol­i­tics, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a warn­ing to the Op­po­si­tion and in­di­vid­u­als she ac­cused of fi­nanc­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, say­ing any at­tempt to spread civ­il un­rest be­yond Port-of-Spain would be met with a strong re­sponse.

“Maybe they and the lo­cal drug mafia hope to en­cour­age civ­il dis­or­der. Maybe. That’s okay. You all can do what you want west of the Light­house. You can mash up the place for all I care. But the day it cross­es east of the Light­house and south of the Light­house, you will get a swift and bru­tal re­sponse from my gov­ern­ment. Re­mem­ber that.”

She al­so ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment of at­tempt­ing to stir racial ten­sions and vowed to chal­lenge such ef­forts.

“This is not Kam­la and UNC you all got ac­cus­tomed to,” she said.

“I will call you all out. I will drag you out. I will beat you to a fraz­zle po­lit­i­cal­ly. And then I’ll beat you to a fraz­zle.”

On na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Per­sad-Bisses­sar vowed an ag­gres­sive re­sponse to vi­o­lent gangs.

“We will bru­talise the vi­o­lent gangs with­in the law. We will bru­talise the lo­cal drug mafia PNM fi­nanciers with­in the law,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that pro­tect­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens re­mained the Gov­ern­ment’s fore­most re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

She cit­ed Po­lice Ser­vice sta­tis­tics show­ing 265 mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber 2026, com­pared with 475 dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2024, a re­duc­tion of 210 killings, or 44.2 per cent.

She al­so high­light­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s $7.321 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, say­ing the fund­ing would strength­en polic­ing, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, tech­nol­o­gy and prison op­er­a­tions.