(Trinidad Guardian) Ghost gangs have surfaced again in the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) in at least two of the ten regions in Trinidad, according to auditors in the field. The auditors have detected what they described as five ghost gangs in the Arima region, and two in Sangre Grande. But Trade and Industry Minister Mariano Browne, who has been in charge of URP since last March, says he did not order an audit, but at the end of the current exercise he would instruct his internal auditors to look into the URP. Browne, who took over URP from Nileung Hypolite, Laventille West MP and Parliamentary Secretary in the Works Ministry, told the Sunday Guardian in the three-month period he had indeed received “unsubstantiated” reports of ghost gang prevalence in URP, but had yet to order investigations.

Browne, who has gained a go-getter reputation since being brought into the Cabinet by Prime Minister Patrick Manning, has orders to sanitise URP operations in the wake of the programme gaining an unsavoury reputation as a base for political patronage and a hotbed for crime, political observers believe. The minister said it was a priority on his agenda to arrange a meeting with the managers of all ten URP regions. Information reaching the Sunday Guardian is that audits currently under way in URP Region 6 in Sangre Grande and at Region 5 in Arima, have turned up conclusive evidence that labourers rostered to work in gangs are not reporting for duty, yet collecting pay every fortnight through their bank accounts.

Labourers earn around TT$650 a fortnight.