Beckles questions Government over recruitment drive

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to de­liv­er on its job promis­es and called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ac­count to thou­sands of ap­pli­cants.

In a state­ment, Beck­les said more than 70,000 peo­ple were dis­missed with­in ten months while 1,801 were hired un­der the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve. She said the Gov­ern­ment had promised 20,000 jobs in Oc­to­ber 2025 and 50,000 jobs dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.

Beck­les said over 110,000 peo­ple ap­plied for the pro­gramme and few­er than two per cent were hired. She de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as an at­tempt to mis­lead ap­pli­cants and de­flect at­ten­tion.

She re­ferred to com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Oc­to­ber 2025 re­gard­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme, in which the Prime Min­is­ter said the pro­grammes amount­ed to “slav­ery” and that she was de­ter­mined not to con­tin­ue them.

Beck­les said thou­sands of for­mer work­ers re­main with­out em­ploy­ment and are fac­ing ris­ing liv­ing costs. She said fam­i­lies are un­able to meet ex­pens­es and young peo­ple are un­able to se­cure jobs.

She al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, stat­ing that there was no al­lo­ca­tion or struc­ture to sup­port the re­cruit­ment tar­get. Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide de­tails on fund­ing and plans to meet the job com­mit­ments made to the pub­lic.

Beck­les called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­spond to those who were dis­missed and to those who ap­plied for po­si­tions un­der the re­cruit­ment dri­ve.