Former WP board chair describes overwhelming backlog

Lemuel Hurlston, former chair of the Work Permit Board

(CNS): The day-to-day realities of trying to deal with the massive backlog of work permit applications when he was appointed board chair in 2009 were revealed by Lemuel Hurlston Thursday in Grand Court. Giving evidence in the trial of Tichina Rickfield, who is accused of deliberately altering the immigration database to overturn some of the board’s decisions, he described the overwhelming situation he and his board faced.

Hurlston said there was a tremendous volume of applications, which was “quite overwhelming”. Speaking about a tour of the immigration department that he and the board members took shortly after appointment, he said they were shown to the room where all of the files were kept.

“We were absolutely amazed at the numbers and the state of the records,” he said. He described an overwhelmed, overworked and an extremely disorganised situation, with applications as much as one year in arrears.

While on the witness stand he described the pressure to catch up, which his board eventually did around one year after its appointment, but the backlog had caused extra board meetings and multiple agendas for some meetings. He admitted that the secretaries and immigration staff supporting the board were the ones taking the brunt of the workload and that the board was dependent on their knowledge and expertise.

He spoke about the concerns raised over the inaccuracies and also the perception by the public that there was favouritism and that something going on at immigration where things were not being handled fairly. He said he sent an email to board members warning them about not attempting to expedite applications and the need to ensure that things were above-board, but he described an atmosphere of distrust.

He said that he had no direct evidence of what was going wrong but there was a perception in the community that there was some kind of corruption going on in connection with immigration and the boards.

Hurlston stated that he had initiated the first audit to compare minutes and agendas to the results of the work he had presided over on the board and that had turned up a number of irregularities from the many thousands of applications that had been dealt with. He said the second audit and Rickfield’s suspension had come about as a result of her not been able to satisfactorily explain some of the anomalies.

However, he too described an environment where protocols were not always followed, where mistakes were made on minutes and on the agendas, leading to discrepancies between the documents.

Hurlston told the court that he introduced new protocols to prevent any changes, minor or otherwise, being made by any of the immigration staff after board meetings but he said it had been happening when the board first took up their appointments. He admitted, however that he could not remember if that was before or after Rickfield was suspended.

Rickfield has denied deliberately altering the database and abuse of office charges against a backdrop of chaos in the department, the workload and the fact that log-ins were not kept confidential, as they should be. She claims to have been singled out as part of a witch-hunt in a toxic workplace environment rife with bullying, backstabbing and false allegations.