BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Nevis Reformation Party (NRP) has lashed out at the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) Administration for what it deems as a politically-motivated, indiscriminate attack against known supporters of its party.
Late last week, the Nevis Island Administration issued a release informing that scores of individuals – who were on the Administration’s payroll for political support of the NRP, and those who would have had lucrative contracts with built-in gratuity payments would have their services/contracts terminated.
SKNVibes understands that this action has already taken place and the NRP, in response, issued a press release on Wednesday (Feb. 20) accusing the CCM-Administration of victimisation.
“The Nevis Reformation Party notes with great alarm that the new Concerned Citizen’s Movement (CCM) Administration is systematically targeting known supporters of the NRP and is engaged in political tribalism in the work force. This Administration is seeking to justify the massive firing on what it describes as ‘an analysis of the staffing of various Departments’, it is clear that no such audit could have informed the predetermined firing of over one hundred workers as these politically motivated dismissals started during the first week that CCM returned to office. Surely, a new and busy Cabinet did not have the time or the requisite skills to do the needs assessment that such an analysis required.”
The NRP challenged the CCM-led Nevis Island Administration to “identify workers who they claim were employed ‘purely for their political support’ and who had ‘no particular job descriptions and no particular qualifications’. We encourage the Administration to support their actions with facts. Further, in the interest of openness, we urge the CCM Administration to defend their recent appointments on the said grounds of ‘qualifications’”.
The NRP’s communique quoted former Premier of Nevis, the Hon. Joseph Parry as indicting that in essence, the CCM “callously fired an average of five persons per day…during their first 20 days in office…”, a far cry from that of the NRP’s which were spent in exercises of job creation.
Thursday evening, this publication spoke with Carlisle Powell who explained that the NRP has begun the process of consulting with those persons who were fired by the CCM-Administration with a view to offering them legal advice. He explained that while he spoke with SKNVibes, a meeting was in progress, attended by about 24 individuals. And the NRP is interested in meeting with the others who have faced the “firing squad”.
“We are meeting now with some of those persons who have been fired. We are hearing from the persons, we are seeing the letters of termination and so on and we are – as a party – we are giving these persons legal advice so that once they have their termination letters, our lawyers would be able to sit with the people and make a decision whether or not the cases can go forward. But we want to offer to those persons who have been fired the best representation that they can get.”
The NRP condemned the CCM Administration’s actions as “political tribalism”, “wilful” and “sadistic” and called for Nevis Christian Council, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Evangelical Association to “stand up for justice and break their deafening silence on the political tribalism engaged in by the CCM. Nevisians should not be victimised in this ruthless manner in the land of their birth”.