The Gov­ern­ment is re­ceiv­ing sharp crit­i­cism from Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) leader Mick­ela Pan­day and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Rush­ton Paray over the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate work­ers at the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pan­day wel­comed Gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to ad­dress cor­rup­tion, waste, and mis­man­age­ment at the state-run pro­grammes. How­ev­er, she con­demned the han­dling of the process as “ad hoc,” ar­gu­ing that the abrupt mass lay­offs at CEPEP, URP, and the Re­for­esta­tion Pro­gramme left thou­sands of low-in­come work­ers, many of them sin­gle moth­ers, with­out prop­er tran­si­tion plans or as­sur­ances of re-em­ploy­ment.

“We be­lieve cor­rup­tion must be ad­dressed, but not at the ex­pense of in­no­cent fam­i­lies now strug­gling to pay rent, buy food, send their chil­dren to school, and ac­cess ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties,” she said.

Pan­day al­so crit­i­cised the size of the Cab­i­net, call­ing for lead­ers to set an ex­am­ple by cut­ting op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

“While work­ers are made to sac­ri­fice, this Gov­ern­ment pre­sides over the largest Cab­i­net in our his­to­ry, cost­ing tax­pay­ers rough­ly TT$1.6 mil­lion every month, al­most TT$19 mil­lion a year, in min­is­te­r­i­al salaries alone, be­fore perks and al­lowances,” she said.

She added: “If the Gov­ern­ment were tru­ly com­mit­ted to fair­ness, it would pro­vide im­me­di­ate sup­port to dis­placed work­ers through so­cial as­sis­tance, re­train­ing pro­grammes, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment. Yet in­stead of pro­tect­ing those most af­fect­ed, thou­sands of fam­i­lies are left in un­cer­tain­ty, strug­gling to meet ba­sic needs, and bear­ing the brunt of de­ci­sions they had no part in.”

In a Face­book post, Paray al­so sup­port­ed root­ing out cor­rup­tion but con­demned the out­right clo­sure of the pro­grammes. He ar­gued that CEPEP and URP have strayed from their orig­i­nal mis­sions, be­com­ing po­lit­i­cal job banks rather than in­stru­ments of so­cial and eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment. How­ev­er, he ar­gued for a more ef­fec­tive way of man­ag­ing the is­sues while main­tain­ing jobs for the vul­ner­a­ble.

“Fix­ing CEPEP and URP does not mean shut­ting them down. It means re­turn­ing them to pur­pose. CEPEP must be­come an in­cu­ba­tor for small busi­ness­es, giv­ing them the train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence to com­pete out­side of gov­ern­ment con­tracts. URP must once again serve as a short-term so­cial re­lief pro­gramme that tack­les the needs of the most vul­ner­a­ble and re­sponds in times of cri­sis. Both must be au­dit­ed, not just for fi­nan­cial leaks but for im­pact on peo­ple’s lives.”

He pro­posed a re­vised struc­ture where a CEPEP con­tract would last no more than three years. Dur­ing that time, he said work­ers and man­age­ment would train in health and safe­ty, project man­age­ment, ac­count­ing, ten­der­ing, and cus­tomer ser­vice. At the end of 36 months, they would grad­u­ate, ready to bid for con­tracts with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, WASA, T&TEC, or pri­vate busi­ness­es.

Paray said URP, cre­at­ed in the 1980s, al­so be­came an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal tool. He rec­om­mend­ed plac­ing the pro­gramme un­der the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to aid its man­date.

Mean­while, the CoP leader called the Gov­ern­ment’s crack­down a nec­es­sary step to root out cor­rup­tion.

“I am hap­py to the ex­tent that the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a po­si­tion to weed out, now, the is­sue of fraud in pub­lic em­ploy­ment, the ef­fect of which is that many peo­ple who are de­serv­ing can­not be em­ployed or can­not be more mean­ing­ful­ly em­ployed. If we are able to get rid of these ghosts, as they are called, then much more will be avail­able to the de­serv­ing. So, I look for­ward to a ro­bust ap­proach to that.”

Ra­mad­har said it was “painful that the poor man paid the price for cor­rup­tion, but not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to pro­vide so­cial as­sis­tance to those af­fect­ed. His on­ly rec­om­men­da­tion was that they move quick­ly to sup­port them.

“Many of the now un­em­ployed do not have the lux­u­ry of time. So, there­fore, what­ev­er has to be done should be done in the short­est pos­si­ble time to en­sure that they can be able to meet their dai­ly com­mit­ments of gro­ceries and liv­ing ex­pens­es.”

Asked about the ab­sence of a time­line for the tran­si­tion, Ra­mad­har ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the Prime Min­is­ter would lis­ten to stake­hold­ers.