Sto­ries by Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath is deny­ing claims that he has in­struct­ed the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme’s (CEPEP) new board to shut down its op­er­a­tions. How­ev­er, he could not pro­vide a time­line for when the com­pa­ny will re­hire work­ers, not­ing CEPEP re­mains un­der re­view.

In fact, Padarath yes­ter­day re­vealed that the board has re­quest­ed six months to com­plete fi­nan­cial au­dits cov­er­ing the past sev­en years.

“It’ s sev­en years of au­dit they had to do. They have not had au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for sev­en years. There are two types of au­dits. There are the phys­i­cal as­sets of the com­pa­ny, and then there are the fi­nan­cial au­dits. Both are still on­go­ing,” Padarath told Guardian Me­dia.

He added that the six-month time pe­ri­od re­quest­ed by the Dain Ma­haraj led board may be a tall or­der.

“I think it’s an am­bi­tious time­frame but we are hop­ing with­in the next six months to have the sev­en years com­plet­ed, but it will be a stretch,” he said.

Asked about the es­ti­mat­ed 10,000 work­ers on the br­erad­line fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ter­mi­na­tion of more than 360 con­trac­tors, Padarath said, “Well, that will have to be a Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. I know that there is a dis­cus­sion that we are hav­ing right now in terms of where do we go with re­spect to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the com­pa­ny, hir­ings, et cetera. So, those things are a bit off in terms of the im­me­di­ate fu­ture CEPEP. Those things are still in dis­cus­sions with the Cab­i­net.”

He added, “I would say hope­ful­ly that in the near fu­ture, we’ll be able to ar­tic­u­late what is the way for­ward for the pro­gramme in par­tic­u­lar.”

He ac­knowl­edged that Gov­ern­ment’s prepa­ra­tion for its first full bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion will al­so play a role in the process.

“That is why it’s tak­ing a lit­tle bit longer, be­cause of the bud­get­ing process and so on.”

Asked what mes­sage he has for the for­mer CEPEP work­ers who were look­ing for­ward to be­ing re­ab­sorbed by the com­pa­ny, Padarath said, “The Gov­ern­ment is look­ing holis­ti­cal­ly in terms of how we can cre­ate more sus­tain­able jobs. So, as I had men­tioned be­fore, it is not just sim­ply about cre­at­ing an­oth­er lay­er of grass cut­ters. It is how do you get these peo­ple en­gaged in more sus­tain­able jobs? And that is what we are look­ing at holis­ti­cal­ly, so that they have a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life, they have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for them­selves,” he said.

“So­cial sup­port and oth­er sup­port will be there to pick up those who need it. We are look­ing at more of a long-term so­lu­tion to the is­sue of em­ploy­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said in the in­ter­im, lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies will con­tin­ue to ful­fil CEPEP’s role, which he added is noth­ing new as it per­tains to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-held re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Econ­o­mist, NGO con­cerned

Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Patrick Wat­son be­lieves some short-term re­lief may be nec­es­sary for the af­fect­ed for­mer CEPEP work­ers, giv­en the po­ten­tial knock-on ef­fects on the wider econ­o­my. How­ev­er, he said pro­grammes like CEPEP are long over­due for a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul.

“Re­mem­ber when these pro­grams came in­to be­ing, they had very def­i­nite ob­jec­tives. In the case of CEPEP, it was to train peo­ple for a lit­tle while and then put them back out in­to the world. But now, this has be­come a thing which you pass on to your chil­dren and your grand­chil­dren. And there are peo­ple, crim­i­nal el­e­ments as well, who are ben­e­fit­ing from this thing. So, they have to deal with this thing,” Wat­son said yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Wat­son said he would pre­fer if the re­view is done as quick­ly as pos­si­ble so those who are “wor­thy of be­ing re­hired will be re­hired.”

Wat­son al­so said there needs to be some sort of cush­ion for the for­mer work­ers.

“Any­time you with­draw peo­ple’s in­come, the ba­sic eco­nom­ics tells you that that is go­ing to have an ef­fect on the peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar. Re­mem­ber, you’re talk­ing about peo­ple who have come to re­ly on this. It’s not their fault that they are re­ly­ing on it. So, what I would sug­gest as an al­ter­na­tive is a pro­gramme that should be set up to bail out peo­ple who are in dire need,” Wat­son sug­gest­ed.

He added, “What we’re go­ing to have to do is find a way to bail out those who are not nec­es­sar­i­ly un­der the CEPEP head­ing, maybe un­der some oth­er form of so­cial pro­gramme, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment or some­thing like that, to make peo­ple not be­come des­ti­tute as a con­se­quence of the with­draw­al of in­come. Be­cause that is what is go­ing to hap­pen. And you don’t want a breed­ing ground for young crim­i­nals in that way.”

Wat­son said he is very much con­cerned about the ef­fects on fam­i­lies and the im­pact on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty this will have. He said there is a need for pro­grammes like CEPEP and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) but they must func­tion in a “so­cial­ly de­sir­able man­ner,” where crim­i­nals don’t get mil­lions and the “or­di­nary cit­i­zen is left with “crumbs from the ta­ble.”

Mean­while, the Roots Foun­da­tion, a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO), is al­ready re­port­ing an uptick in re­quests for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, with af­fect­ed in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing help to pur­chase school­books, ba­sic food items and cov­er rent.

Founder Mti­ma Sol­wazi said most CEPEP work­ers lived pay cheque to pay cheque, leav­ing them par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble in the af­ter­math of the con­tract ter­mi­na­tions.

“Right here in Port-of-Spain, if you go in­to some su­per­mar­kets right now, it’s emp­ty. Su­per­mar­kets on Queen Street, on Char­lotte Street, be­cause the peo­ple who would buy from these su­per­mar­kets are the per­sons on that low­er in­come, be­cause those su­per­mar­kets pro­vide for those per­sons’ in­come, and if they don’t have an in­come, they can­not buy, right?”

Sol­wazi is now wor­ried that pet­ty crime will in­crease.

“I think the Gov­ern­ment should re­vis­it that or put some­thing in place to sup­port this most vul­ner­a­ble group in so­ci­ety who will be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the in­abil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing for their fam­i­lies through le­gal em­ploy­ment.”

He said the CEPEP fir­ings af­fect­ed many women who, in sev­er­al cas­es, were the main bread win­ner for their fam­i­lies. He lament­ed that the job mar­ket may be un­kind to them, as many ac­cept­ed the CEPEP job as a last re­sort and do not pos­sess the nec­es­sary skills to work else­where.

PNM re­sponds

For­mer Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for CEPEP, Faris Al-Rawi, yes­ter­day said cur­rent­ly, there are 30,000 peo­ple who were put on the bread­line by the Gov­ern­ment.

He lament­ed that Gov­ern­ment keeps shift­ing the goal­post on CEPEP, first ques­tion­ing the award­ing of con­tracts, then claim­ing the pro­gramme was in­fil­trat­ed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments, and now fram­ing its ac­tions as an ef­fort to “lib­er­ate” peo­ple from be­ing mere grass-cut­ters.

Al-Rawi said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment main con­cern is the work­ers and is tak­ing is­sue with them be­ing di­min­ished by the line min­is­ter.

“For us, com­mon peo­ple, good peo­ple that get up in the morn­ing and go to work and bring food home for their fam­i­lies, es­pe­cial­ly with the school term com­ing in Sep­tem­ber to start, we are wor­ried about them, which is why our leader has tak­en us down the path of lit­i­ga­tion,” he said, re­fer­ring to the fact that a group of PNM lawyers is tak­ing the mat­ter to court on be­half of the fired con­trac­tors and work­ers.

How­ev­er, he said lit­i­ga­tion would take years and short-term re­lief is need­ed through so­cial as­sis­tance grants. Al-Rawi said he is “as­tound­ed” that the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment, which po­si­tions it­self as a peo­ple-cen­tred Gov­ern­ment, is op­er­at­ing in this way.

“What is quite as­tound­ing from some­body that has pro­mot­ed things like ba­by milk grant and about look­ing af­ter sin­gle moth­ers, etc., that there has been not one it­er­a­tion of a thought on how the most vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety are go­ing to be giv­en aid and as­sis­tance. They are with­out em­ploy­ment.”