At Least 9 Employees Fired from NICH

Patrick Faber

As we have reported, the National Institute of Culture and History had been running on financial trouble for months.  The Minister of Education Patrick Faber had raised the alarm on May thirteenth and President Sapna Budhrani had said she was putting together a plan to get them out of the hole. When the lockdown started, NICH’s income fell considerably; the subvention it received from government only covered forty-five percent of their monthly salaries. Today at least nine employees were sent home as NICH acknowledged it was broke; four from the Institute of Creative Arts and two from the administrative sector and three from the Houses of Culture. Including in the list are senior directors such as Theatre Director Karen Vernon and Director of Film & Media Arts Unit, Suzette Zayden.  It is estimated that the semi quasi body has lost at least seventy-five percent of its income from parks and other recreation sites.  This is what Minister Faber said at the time:

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education [File: May 13th, 2020]

“The matter of increments, in terms of the public service, of course, has been dealt with by the prime minister himself and this matter also has to do with the teachers.  I want to say that I support the prime minister’s position fully, but it’s not only that I support the prime minister’s position.  I believe that a good majority of the teachers themselves support the prime minister’s position.  Here we are in a position where many in the private sector are losing their jobs, many in the tourism industry; in fact in the National Institute of Culture and History which is a quasi-government body, it receives a subvention from the government but it also depends on revenue from the archaeological sites and tourists if you will.  There is going to have to be, in fact there is an ongoing discussion now as to what is going to be the case there because the only revenue that’s coming into NICH right now is from the government subvention which only pays about forty-five percent of the salary bill per month.  So there has to be a serious discussion there as well, and I say all of that to say that asking for teachers and public servants to forego their increments for a fiscal year is not an unreasonable request.  By and large, we work in the public service every day, I work in the public service everyday and I don’t get that impression coming from a good many of the public servants that they are not willing to do what they need to do, this small compromise in order to support the country’s effort where in fact the salaries of all public servants are still being honored by this administration.  So I would want to think that the teachers and maybe even the leadership of the B.N.T.U. are in that same position to say, my goodness the government is bending backwards.”