Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

From June 1, the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices will have a re­vised el­i­gi­bil­i­ty Stan­dard Means test al­low­ing more low-in­come and vul­ner­a­ble per­sons to qual­i­fy for State sup­port. This in­cludes house­holds af­fect­ed by the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry Na­tal­ie Chai­tan-Ma­haraj gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing queries from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs on whether there has been any in­crease in ap­pli­ca­tions for so­cial as­sis­tance, food sup­port or oth­er wel­fare pro­grammes since CEPEP’s clo­sure/re­struc­tur­ing.

Attzs asked what tar­get­ed so­cial sup­port mea­sures have been im­ple­ment­ed to sup­port house­holds pre­vi­ous­ly de­pen­dent on CEPEP in­come and whether the min­istry as­sessed the im­pact of the loss of CEPEP in­come on house­hold wel­fare, in­clud­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, school at­ten­dance or ac­cess to ba­sic ser­vices.

In re­sponse, Chai­tan-Ma­haraj said the Min­istry es­tab­lished an ap­pro­pri­ate ref­er­ence pe­ri­od and con­duct­ed a com­par­a­tive analy­sis for new ap­pli­ca­tions for two of its wide­ly ac­cessed grants – the Pub­lic As­sis­tance grant and the Food Sup­port pro­gramme. This was over the pe­ri­ods Ju­ly 2024 to March 2025 and Ju­ly 2025 to March 2026.

“An analy­sis of the da­ta re­ceived from the Min­istry’s So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion in­di­cates that the to­tal num­ber of new ap­pli­ca­tions un­der the Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant and the Food Sup­port pro­gramme in­creased by 16.4 per cent – that’s a rise of 441 ap­pli­ca­tions,” she added.

“From Ju­ly 2024 to March 2025, there were 2,689 ap­pli­ca­tions and from Ju­ly 2025 to March 2026, there were 3,130 ap­pli­ca­tions. Based on the da­ta analy­sis un­der­tak­en, no di­rect cor­re­la­tion or cau­sa­tion can be es­tab­lished be­tween the in­crease in new ap­pli­ca­tions for the two grants and dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of CEPEP core rou­tine op­er­a­tions.”

Chai­tan-Ma­haraj said the min­istry un­der­took a re­vi­sion of the Stan­dard Means test used to de­ter­mine el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for the Min­istry’s So­cial Safe­ty Net Grant.

She said the Min­istry didn’t con­duct any spe­cif­ic im­pact study on the loss of CEPEP in­come on house­holds, but con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tors de­vel­op­ments with­in the so­cial sec­tor and main­tains on­go­ing en­gage­ments with key stake­hold­ers and part­ner agen­cies to ob­tain rel­e­vant da­ta to in­form pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment.

Chai­tan-Ma­haraj said the min­istry im­ple­ment­ed tar­get­ed tem­po­rary $550 Food Card ini­tia­tives to help al­le­vi­ate in­creased fi­nan­cial pres­sures ex­pe­ri­enced by fam­i­lies in sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al, cul­tur­al and re­li­gious ob­ser­vances. The cards, which are dis­trib­uted at Christ­mas on­ly, were ex­pand­ed to in­clude Di­vali, Eid ul Fitr and Shouter Bap­tist ob­ser­vances.

In re­sponse to in­creas­ing de­mand, she added that ap­pli­ca­tions for the most re­cent Christ­mas sea­son were in­creased from 200 cards to 250 per con­stituen­cy.

Al­lo­ca­tions of 60 cards per con­stituen­cy were pro­vid­ed for Di­vali and ten per con­stituen­cy for Eid ul Fitr and Shouter Bap­tist.

Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste said while the Min­istry hadn’t un­der­tak­en a for­mal labour mar­ket as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine the em­ploy­ment sta­tus of per­sons af­fect­ed by CEPEP’s clo­sure per se, it has been as­sess­ing the un­em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion gen­er­al­ly in T&T and is con­sid­er­ing strate­gies in keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy frame­work and Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print.

“A re­port pre­sent­ing a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis and rec­om­men­da­tions is due to be sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net short­ly,” he added.

Bap­tiste de­tailed pro­grammes, in­clud­ing ex­tend­ing sup­port to for­mer CEPEP work­ers through the Na­tion­al Em­ploy­ment Ser­vice - link­ing em­ploy­ers and job seek­ers.

“Steps are be­ing tak­en to fa­cil­i­tate the place­ment of peo­ple in suit­able em­ploy­ment,” he said.