Says foreigners treated better than locals in business arena
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE Hon. Shawn K. Richards, Leader of the People's Action Movement (PAM) and Deputy Leader of the Unity Construct claimed that a non-national currently working through the PEP Programme collects a large sum of money each month while locals are being paid minimum wage.
The claims were made on the platform of a Unity political meeting last evening (Oct. 9) In George Street, Newtown.
Richards claimed that the foreigner is a St. Lucian and she collects thousands of dollars as salary at the end of each month.
"While you are collecting $320 per week, there is a woman from St. Lucia with the PEP Programme collecting $10 000 per month."
He emphasised that the PEP Programme has nothing to do with ensuring that the young people of the Federation has a job or gain skills.
"As a matter of fact, they have a Board of Directors for the PEP Programme [and] civil servants who already collecting a salary from government collecting over $1 000 each and every month from the PEP Programme, supposedly as Directors," he claimed.
Richards encouraged the crowd not to be fooled by the "gimmicks and tricks" of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party and government because "Denzil Douglas does not care about you, he cares about his friends, the family and the foreigners".
The Constituency Five Parliamentary Representative went on to say that the business people are suddenly being told that they could go to the SIDF and collect money if needed, and for that he is happy but not pleased with the fact that foreigners were looked after long before the locals.
"I am not happy about the fact that you had Kittitian Hill, which could have collected $100M because some Trinidadians came here, went into Douglas office with an empty briefcase and told him they came to do a project...and at the end of the day nothing was doing down there and so SIDF had to bail them out."
He also spoke of Christophe Harbour, which he said was given some $42M by the SIDF but "People in this country, only $100 000 you can get".
"If you want to start a business and buy a vehicle, a vehicle alone could take almost the entire $100 000. Not even $1M you could get because you only suppose to think small. You are not supposed to think big," he added.
Speaking again about the PEP Programme, Richards said, "Again nothing new, nothing representing change. You had the short-term Work Experience Programme before you had the YES Programme, and as soon as it got the votes from some of those young persons, those programmes also came to an end."
He said that the Labour Administration did not and does not care about the young people working on the programme who have bills to pay and children to support, but rather their votes on election day.
Richards said the same thing would happen with the PEP Programme; when election is over it would come to an end.
