Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness, and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, Dr Faith Breb­nor has de­fend­ed her use of ex­ple­tives dur­ing a re­cent meet­ing with em­ploy­ees at the Pub­lic Health Ser­vices De­part­ment in Sig­nal Hill. 

Speak­ing in a ple­nary sit­ting on Thurs­day, Breb­nor ex­plained that the strong lan­guage was meant to make the point clear and push for re­al change in ad­dress­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty chal­lenges with­in the de­part­ment.

The meet­ing, which was part of dis­cus­sions on im­prov­ing work­ing con­di­tions at Sig­nal Hill, fo­cused on the com­mence­ment of three key planned projects.

While some em­ploy­ees crit­i­cised the lan­guage, Breb­nor stood by her ac­tions, say­ing that the use of ex­ple­tives was in­tend­ed to high­light the se­ri­ous­ness of the is­sues at hand. She said she clear­ly stat­ed that the con­ver­sa­tion could be un­fil­tered giv­ing work­ers the green light to be open and di­rect in rais­ing con­cerns.

She said one of the dri­vers com­plained of not hav­ing boots on be­cause the wrong ones were pro­cured due to an er­ror caused by the ex­ist­ing pro­cure­ment laws. She ad­mit­ted that’s when she used the ex­ple­tives. 

She ex­plained, “Now, we spent the mon­ey. Which means for us to buy boots for him again we have to get the mon­ey and yes I did say ‘I have to pull it out of meh (ass)’ be­cause we have to find mon­ey again af­ter we went through the process.”

Al­though the men ac­cused her of curs­ing sev­er­al times, she did not ad­mit to any oth­er in­stance.

Since the in­ci­dent on Tues­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion ask­ing for the work­ers to come to him di­rect­ly.

“Dis­gust­ing, ap­palling, and bor­der­line in­sult­ing” were some of the words the work­ers used to de­scribe the in­ter­ac­tion.

The work­ers claimed the sec­re­tary used the “F” word to the trans­port fore­man and then asked them when is­sues sur­round­ing over­time were raised if they want­ed her to “pull it out my ass.”

How­ev­er, the trans­port fore­man at the cen­tre of the ver­bal abuse said his col­leagues blew the in­ci­dent out of pro­por­tion since he saw no rea­son for them to stand up for him as he didn’t feel dis­re­spect­ed by the ex­ple­tives used.

The mo­tion on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was brought by Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Sport As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Wayne Clarke.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, he blamed the lack of fund­ing for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and the poor work eth­ic among some work­ers as the ma­jor rea­sons for the is­land’s low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. 

He ex­plained that with­out enough re­sources, the THA strug­gles to run im­por­tant pro­grammes. Clarke al­so men­tioned that while some work­ers are hard­work­ing, oth­ers have poor work ethics, which af­fects progress.

In re­sponse, THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris ar­gued that nei­ther work­ers nor fund­ing was the prob­lem. He point­ed to poor man­age­ment of hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources as the re­al is­sue, say­ing this mis­man­age­ment is what sti­fles pro­duc­tiv­i­ty on the is­land.

Mor­ris said, “While I be­lieve there is mer­it to look­ing at pro­duc­tiv­i­ty across the THA and all in­sti­tu­tions, I do not agree with the di­ag­no­sis that the prob­lem is the work­ers. My prog­no­sis to this is­sue is that we have in­com­pe­tent dri­vers who are un­wor­thy of the li­cence they were giv­en.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, as the de­bate on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ued, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer had to briefly sus­pend the sit­ting due to a lack of quo­rum— an or­der which states that a sit­ting can­not hap­pen if less than nine as­sem­bly­men are present in the cham­ber.

It re­sumed min­utes lat­er af­ter mem­bers re­turned to the cham­ber.