Fair day’s work for fair day’s pay

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley wants “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” from em­ploy­ees of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. He is con­cerned that cor­po­ra­tions have be­come em­ploy­ment agen­cies and he wants that to change.

The PM is­sued the chal­lenge to the chair­man and coun­cil­lors at the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and by ex­ten­sion oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions when he ad­dressed yes­ter­day’s swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for mem­bers of the cor­po­ra­tion lo­cat­ed in his Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy.

On Mon­day, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein chas­tised work­ers at re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions for “wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey” with their lack of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Dr Row­ley ad­dressed the is­sues which have plagued re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions for decades, and par­tic­u­lar­ly what the new coun­cil will be up against dur­ing their tenure. A prime con­cern for him is the work eth­ic with­in the cor­po­ra­tions.

“If we are hon­est with our­selves, we al­so would have to ad­mit that what the cor­po­ra­tions have be­come are em­ploy­ment agen­cies for peo­ple and in many in­stances, for peo­ple who don’t have in­ten­tions of do­ing any work.”

This echoed Ho­sein’s sen­ti­ments at the swear­ing-in of Port-of-Spain may­or Joel Mar­tinez on Mon­day when he said he was fed up of the “very low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els” across all cor­po­ra­tions.

Dr Row­ley’s state­ment al­so comes just one month af­ter San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo ad­mit­ted to hir­ing one of his sons at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion. The younger Re­grel­lo was re­port­ed­ly “hard­ly ever seen” work­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion. Yes­ter­day, de­spite con­cerns about the em­ploy­ment of his son, Re­grel­lo was re-elect­ed may­or of the south­ern city.