The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

TWELVE of the 14 school lunch vendors under contract with the Department of Social Services in Grand Bahama are claiming that they were victimised after their services were abruptly terminated without proper notice on Friday.

The women said they were called to a meeting at 2pm with a senior official at Social Services and told that their contracts had ended and were not being renewed. Of the 14 lunch vendors on the school lunch programme, they said only two of the vendors, who are known PLPs, were not terminated.

The women believe that their contracts were not renewed because of their political affiliation and further claimed that they were being replaced with PLP supporters.

Yesterday, Deputy Leader of the Free National Movement Peter Turnquest condemned the alleged “politically driven” action. He said the move is an “attack on ordinary hardworking Bahamian families.”

However, Paula Marshall, a senior official at the Department of Social Services, said the contracts have come to an end and vendors were aware that this could happen.

“They were aware that anytime you are contractual there would be a time when maybe the contracts would come to an end,” she said.

However, the women said they were not expecting to be out of work and had already purchased food items and supplies on credit with local wholesalers.

“We were not given sufficient notice. What are we going to do now? We are stuck with all this food and most of us are single parents and widows – we have loans and mortgages with the bank,” one said.

Another vendor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that they also employed helpers and so now 24 persons are out of work.

Some of them have been working for the school lunch programme since 1996. They claimed that they had never signed any contracts when they initially started.

“They called us on September 7 and had us sign contracts which were dated from May 2014, and when we told them the date was wrong they said they would correct it,” they claimed.

The women said that some of the new hires do not meet criteria required by the Department of Social Services to be in the programme. They claim that some of the new caterers hired are on pension and some are receiving food assistance from Social Services.

One vendor, who lost her husband 10 months ago and has no other means of income, said they were dealt with very unprofessionally.

She said that they were not given sufficient notice and should have been allowed to continue until the end of the year.

Another vendor said: “We don’t mind the contract and we don’t mind them not giving it back to us, but the way it was done; it was victimisation. We all have bills to pay.”

On learning the news, Mr Turnquest, the MP for East Grand Bahama said: “The Free National Movement notes with great anguish the reports of continued attacks on defenceless Grand Bahamian families in the name of raw politics.

“For several weeks, it has been alleged that there has been mass termination of contracts of lunch vendors who have been doing an excellent job providing meals to students on the government’s lunch programme. Reports reaching us indicated that there was no basis for these terminations and in some cases, siblings are being pitted against one another in a perverse game of politics with an election looming.

“The FNM condemns these actions in the most strongest of terms,” he said in a press statement on Monday.

Mr Turnquest said that he had attempted to get to the bottom of the matter, placing numerous calls to the Department of Social Services, the Department of Education, and the Ministry of Grand Bahama, without success.

He described the vendors as “salt of the earth people who have done things the right way and worked hard for their survival in this difficult Grand Bahamian economy.”

Mr Turnquest added: “Indeed the actions being alleged here are sickening in 2015 and constitute another assault on our democracy and freedom to choose and support a political party of our choice. We call upon Bahamians of all political persuasions to reject this wicked attempt to further throw back democratic progress in this country to the wicked ways of the Progressive Liberal Party, which we all hoped had been buried in 1992 and again in 2007.”