The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

PROGRESSIVE Liberal Party chairman Fred Mitchell has denounced suggestions that staff and programme coordinators at the Fox Hill Community Centre were unqualified, political hires.

In a statement released by the party yesterday, Mr Mitchell claimed the Minnis administration - specifically National Security Minister Marvin Dames - was actively working to trash the reputation of those working at the centre as pretext to scrapping operations at the facility.

The government and staff at the Fox Hill centre have been locked in a pay dispute, with some employees unpaid for months.

On Sunday, Mr Dames indicated government officials were seeking an agreement that would specify what aspects of the centre would be directly funded by the government and what would be funded by the centre’s board.

To date, he said, an agreement was drafted, but not yet presented to the board. Mr Dames said the Minnis administration ultimately wants the facility to be managed by the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture so at-risk programmes for youth could proceed at the facility.

He also revealed an assessment of the staff at the centre determined most of them were not qualified and were hired just before the 2017 general election.

Firing back yesterday, Mr Mitchell said he was “amazed” by the level of “insensitivity and tone deafness” displayed by those in the Minnis administration.

“They have no feel for people at all,” the former Fox Hill MP said in a statement. “They are mean and mean-spirited and bloody-minded with it. It is hard to believe they were raised in the same country with us. They seem to say anything that comes out of their mouths without any regard for the truth, firstly, and secondly for the sensitivity of people who are unable to defend themselves.”

Mr Mitchell was referring to the legacy and work of deceased former National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage and the centre’s staff. “Neither can speak for themselves,” he said. “The people who work at the Fox Hill Community Centre are qualified for the jobs they do. They were hired according to specific mandates and they match those qualifications. They are not called upon to perform rocket science.

“The fact that the minister thinks that they are unqualified does not entitle the government to renege on their commitment and refuse to pay them. As of this note, they are owed six months’ salary with no prospect of getting paid,” he added.

Mr Mitchell said despite claims by the government, its handling of the problem illustrates a want to close the centre.

“The minister is simply setting up a pretext to fire them. The FNM’s modus operandi of ‘stop, review and cancel’ and ‘fire not hire’ is at work,” he said. “Just read the business of ‘unqualified’ together with ‘hired just before the election’ and you can see what he is up to. This is now a PLP/FNM thing.”

He continued: “The darn community centre was completed in April 2017. The election was May 2017. So when else should they have been hired: after the election? What a silly thing to say.

“The FNM has been saying since coming to office that they can’t find the files, the Cabinet conclusions, the agreements. They can’t find anything. This is false because the present minister was briefed in extensio before he dismissed, on political grounds, the individual who was responsible for the superintendence of the community centre from his ministry.

“It is all there to be found. The government does not own the building. George Mackey, my predecessor, saw to it that this would be the case. (Former) Prime Minister Perry Christie publicly said that he would finish the building and the building would be a gift to the people of Fox Hill. So said, so done.”

An Inter-American Development Bank loan, through the Citizen Security and Justice Initiative, partly funded renovations at the centre.

The property was acquired by former Minister of Housing George Mackey, now deceased, in the 1990s and conveyed to the Fox Hill Development Association to be held in trust for Fox Hill residents.

A multi-purpose auditorium, constructed after the PLP regained power in 2002, was developed into a world-class facility during the last Christie administration.