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Things are becoming frightening
Things are getting frightening in this country. When nine persons employed within the 1000 homes project can be sent packing without being given a hearing, it is the most unsettling development since the new government took office eleven months on.
This is not a defence of any of the dismissed staff. It is a defence of the right of each one of them to a defence of their performance.
Perhaps, they deserved what came their way. Perhaps some did and others did not. But to not allow each one of them due process, to not afford them the right to defend their actions and to give reasons why they should not be dismissed is unconscionable.
No one knows whether the innocent have been slaughtered in the mass dismissals. No one knows the circumstances of those who are now in the breadline and if there have been within their midst someone who did not deserve to be put in this predicament, and whose life and that of his or her family is not altered forever.
It is being reported that the inspection of the 1000 homes project found defects and some of these defects were attributable to theft and others to shoddy work.
It has been one year since the new government took over, so how are we to assume that the vandalism did not take place under the watch of the new administration?
How are we to judge the substandard work? Were inspections carried out a certified and qualified engineering entity? Was a report prepared? Did the report finger those dismissed as being responsible for the defective works? Is there photographic evidence? Will this be provided to the media?
If there are reports on the defects done by qualified personnel, if those dismissed were fingered in the report for neglect of duties, then it should be no problem for the authorities to constitute a disciplinary committee and subject the fingered persons to a disciplinary hearing where at least they would be allowed to show evidence why they should not be dismissed. The absence of this opportunity means that these persons are denied due process.
If it is a case that hundreds of millions of dollars will now have to be spent to fix the homes, then, if true, this would mean that those fingered were negligent in their duties. Such negligence constitutes corruption which is not just confined to acts of commission but also to acts of omission.
Given the extent of the alleged repairs that will now have to be done, charges should have been laid against those responsible, not dismissals. Why are the authorities seeking the easy way out rather than prosecuting those who it is said will not cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars?
The absence of due process should scare all those working within the government. Many of them may be afraid to speak about and since many are not unionized industrial actions becomes more difficult.
If those dismissed had been unionized, there would have been a reaction from the union concerned. They would have taken strike action. The entire workforce would have reacted by withdrawing their labour because such actions also threaten their security of tenure.
But no union means that the working class is divided and therefore persons can be dismissed at pleasure.
Unless the workers of the former Ministry of Housing and the Central Planning and Housing Authority take industrial action, I am afraid that reports of the sort of mass dismissals that we are now reading about will continue.
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