Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Khadijah Ameen says public servants previously attached to the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) have been reassigned to technical units within the Ministry, as the Government moves to wind down the programme.
Responding to questions during the Standing Finance Committee, Minister Ameen explained that $6.5 million was allocated for salaries and Cost-of-Living Allowances (COLA) under the URP for fiscal 2027.
“So while they are getting paid under this URP Head, they have been assigned to different technical sections within the Ministry of Local Government. All of these are public servants, and while they are there currently, it’s sort of a temporary arrangement, as they are absorbed into different Corporations and different parts of the Ministry, they will be removed from this URP Head because we are not; we don’t intend to maintain this URP Head because, you know, the programme is being closed down. So this is the public servants who are there, who are assigned to different places, but they still get paid under this Head.”
Minister Ameen also noted that the Government continues to honour a lease agreement for the URP headquarters in El Socorro, at a cost of $213,000 per month.
She said those expenses will be eliminated once the programme is fully terminated.
Minister Ameen added that staff currently based at the URP headquarters have been tasked with organising and digitising records accumulated over the years.
“One of the major things that they are doing there is compiling the employment records because a lot of people who worked in URP over the years, they still come to URP for the employment records to go to NIS and to get an old-age pension. And that records management is something that they are actively getting in order, because in the upcoming fiscal through our recurrent expenditure, we want to digitise those and have them in the possession of the Ministry so that you will not need those, that URP staffing.”