Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

As days turn in­to weeks since the Gov­ern­ment shut down the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), cit­i­zens say the ev­i­dence of non-op­er­a­tional teams in their com­mu­ni­ties is be­com­ing more glar­ing.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day spoke to one woman about the ab­sence of crews while she was pur­chas­ing co­conut wa­ter along El So­cor­ro Road, in the con­stituen­cy of Barataria/San Juan.

“Es­pe­cial­ly with the cut­ting of the grass and the clean­ing of the area, CEPEP was im­por­tant in this area... A lot of garbage all over, drains clog­ging. They used to cut the grass, which will stop mos­qui­to breed­ing; the place is just dirty,” she said.

The co­conut ven­dor, See­lal Ram­char­ran, shared sim­i­lar views about the shut­down of the pro­gramme. He com­plained about the over­grown grass on the road in front of his busi­ness and home, which he now has to pay peo­ple to clean.

“All the pave­ment and thing, you not see­ing any­body clean­ing it. They used to main­tain it; I have to pay peo­ple to clean up in front some­times, but when CEPEP was do­ing it, we didn’t have to,” he said.

At a bar­ber­shop along the same stretch, own­er Ganesh Emile said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to find a so­lu­tion to clean up af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties quick­ly.

“We are in the rainy sea­son. Be­ing in the rainy sea­son, grass just con­tin­ues to grow; you can’t stop it, it will al­ways be grow­ing, and that is why I be­lieve that they need to have an ini­tia­tive where peo­ple have to come back out and or­gan­ise,” he ex­plained.

Emile said he hard­ly sees the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion fill­ing the gap that CEPEP left.

In the con­stituen­cy of Aranguez/St Joseph, me­chan­ic David Lawrence said Thurs­day’s rains showed just how much the CEPEP pro­gramme was need­ed in their com­mu­ni­ty.

“CEPEP does cut there. I had to clear it out yes­ter­day with the set of rain we had,” he shared.

He called on those in au­thor­i­ty to do some­thing about it be­fore the sit­u­a­tion wors­ened and mos­qui­toes be­gan to breed.

One for­mer CEPEP work­er, who want­ed to be re­ferred to as Roope, said it both­ered him to walk around the com­mu­ni­ty he kept clean less than two months ago.

“Some­times, I cross­ing the road there and I see things in the road, and I kick it to the side. I doh bound to be do­ing that,” he stat­ed.

And while he wor­ries about the up­keep of his com­mu­ni­ty, Roope is al­so con­cerned about the well-be­ing of his col­leagues, some of whom he said are sin­gle par­ents.

“Who’s help­ing them?” he shout­ed.

He point­ed us in the di­rec­tion of a green space that was once used for jog­ging and recre­ation, now over­grown by high grass and lit­tered with trash.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath re­peat­ed yes­ter­day that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions were man­dat­ed to in­crease their work as it re­lates to recre­ation grounds and pub­lic spaces.

“Nei­ther CEPEP nor URP deals with garbage col­lec­tion or en­force­ment of an­ti-dump­ing mea­sures,” he said.

Ear­li­er this week, res­i­dents in Diego Mar­tin, Pe­tit Val­ley and Port-of-Spain com­plained about sim­i­lar is­sues since the shut­down of CEPEP.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment for both Aranguez and St Joseph, De­vesh Ma­haraj and Sad­dam Hoesin. Ho­sein re­peat­ed Padarath’s state­ment, while Ma­haraj did not re­spond. Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen al­so did not re­spond up to press time.

On June 27, 360 CEPEP con­trac­tors were hand­ed ter­mi­na­tion let­ters with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, an ac­tion that im­pact­ed over 10,500 work­ers.

The CEPEP Pro­gramme is a state-run ini­tia­tive in T&T aimed at en­vi­ron­men­tal main­te­nance, em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ty im­prove­ment.