As un­cer­tain­ty sur­rounds the fate of thou­sands of CEPEP work­ers across the coun­try, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris has tak­en mat­ters in­to his own hands, qui­et­ly re­ab­sorb­ing a few in­to short-term work in his Pleas­antville elec­toral dis­trict.

Par­ris’ move comes as over 10,500 work­ers and 360 con­trac­tors were abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed on June 27, af­ter the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme Com­pa­ny can­celled all con­tracts. The new­ly elect­ed Gov­ern­ment cit­ed unau­tho­rised pre-elec­tion con­tract re­newals, al­leged po­lit­i­cal abuse, and fi­nan­cial ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. While the Min­istries of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment have since as­sured that CEPEP would re­turn in some form, many work­ers re­main in lim­bo.

Among those af­fect­ed was De­siree Lopez, who pub­licly shared her strug­gle, say­ing she was down to her last $100 and feared be­com­ing home­less with her three chil­dren dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust school break.

Re­call­ing this tes­ti­mo­ny, pub­lished by Guardian Me­dia, Par­ris said he could not ig­nore the des­per­a­tion in his com­mu­ni­ty. He ap­proached L’Jaysan Main­te­nance and Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny, who was the area’s CEPEP con­trac­tor, to rec­om­mend sev­en for­mer work­ers for tem­po­rary as­sign­ments through the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC). Un­der SFCC pol­i­cy, coun­cil­lors can rec­om­mend short-term hires from their dis­tricts.

In an in­ter­view at City Hall yes­ter­day, Par­ris said he en­gaged the work­ers for two weeks to as­sist with main­te­nance in Pleas­antville. Yes­ter­day, they tack­led the Glen Jear­mott Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den, clear­ing land, cre­at­ing gar­den beds, and land­scap­ing. To­day, they re­turn to their pre­vi­ous du­ties of keep­ing the neigh­bour­hood clean.

“It’s not even a mat­ter for de­bate. When peo­ple elect you, the job is to serve them. The clean­li­ness of the en­vi­ron­ment is para­mount to the health and safe­ty of the peo­ple of Pleas­antville,” Par­ris said

Hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed the area for 15 years, Par­ris said he recog­nis­es how deeply the job cuts have af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

“Cer­tain­ly, they have fam­i­lies, and we un­der­stand all that comes with pro­vid­ing for your fam­i­ly.”

He not­ed that, un­like CEPEP, the SFCC pays a slight­ly high­er wage every fort­night, mak­ing the in­ter­ven­tion even more valu­able while work­ers await per­ma­nent so­lu­tions.

“The city cor­po­ra­tion, we do pay sig­nif­i­cant­ly more in a fort­night than CEPEP did, so I thought un­der the cir­cum­stances, while the na­tion­al de­bate is on­go­ing, that some­one should step up to as­sist the for­mer CEPEP work­ers.”

The size of Pleas­antville, he said, makes reg­u­lar up­keep a chal­lenge. The com­mu­ni­ty once re­quired two CEPEP con­trac­tors. With the help of the re-en­gaged work­ers, he now plans to fo­cus more at­ten­tion on Old Pleas­antville, ro­tat­ing work­ers fort­night­ly for main­te­nance du­ties.

Par­ris has since shared the idea with his fel­low coun­cil­lors.

“In each elec­toral dis­trict, the cul­ture is dif­fer­ent. I im­plore the mem­bers of the coun­cil to see the sense in what I am say­ing. A lot of the time, I push them in a di­rec­tion not based on what I want, but on my ex­pe­ri­ence. I’m try­ing to guide them.”

So far, Les Ef­forts East/Cipero coun­cil­lor Ryaad Ho­sein has ex­pressed sup­port for the ini­tia­tive.

Par­ris be­lieves more peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly those with the means, should help sup­port dis­placed CEPEP work­ers dur­ing this tran­si­tion pe­ri­od.

Look­ing ahead, Par­ris hopes that when SFCC re­ceives fund­ing from re­cent prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tions, it can ex­pand short-term hir­ing and re­duce re­liance on ex­ter­nal con­trac­tors, cre­at­ing a more re­spon­sive and com­mu­ni­ty-fo­cused ap­proach to pub­lic up­keep.