Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) work­ers in To­ba­go are call­ing for greater com­pen­sa­tion as they tran­si­tion from beau­ti­fy­ing parks to agri­cul­tur­al work.

Dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in June, Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts re­vealed that the pro­gramme would now fall un­der the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, with work­ers as­signed to agri­cul­ture as part of ef­forts to boost do­mes­tic food pro­duc­tion.

Sev­er­al teams have al­ready been in­tro­duced to the new pro­gramme, re­cent­ly plant­i­ng pump­kin at a Mil­shirv project site.

Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty Wane “Wasp” Clarke said sweet pota­to would be the next crop. How­ev­er, he warned that em­ploy­ees who do not get on board with the change in their job de­scrip­tion may have to seek em­ploy­ment else­where, as agri­cul­ture is the pro­gramme’s new di­rec­tion.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to sev­er­al Cepep work­ers yes­ter­day morn­ing as they car­ried out du­ties at Lam­beau and Sig­nal Hill. While most wel­comed the in­te­gra­tion of farm­ing in­to the pro­gramme, they com­plained about a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the au­thor­i­ties and said their con­cerns had not been ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed.

The burn­ing ques­tion for the ma­jor­i­ty was whether their salaries would be re­vised to re­flect their new du­ties.

“Once is agri­cul­ture, we have to get a raise in pay­ment. That is more work yuh talk­ing about,” one woman, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said.

Her co-work­er agreed: “They talk­ing about more work with agri­cul­ture but they ain’t talk­ing about raise of pay.”

An­oth­er work­er claimed em­ploy­ees had been left in lim­bo be­cause they had not been briefed about the move to a new di­vi­sion.

“No­body ain’t tell we noth­ing. We just hear­ing what go­ing on.”

A se­nior em­ploy­ee urged the THA to be re­al­is­tic about the lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ex­pect­ed, not­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of Cepep work­ers were not young.

“If you find 100 Cepep work­ers be­tween 20-30 years old, you find plen­ty,” she said.

A woman who has been in the pro­gramme for sev­er­al years ex­pressed doubts about her abil­i­ty to per­form agri­cul­tur­al work.

“I is a pres­sure case. I can’t take the bend­ing down,” she said.

An­oth­er work­er said, “I is 53 years old. I do surgery. Where they get­ting me to plant? Cepep has a lot of el­der­ly peo­ple.”

She urged the THA to re­cruit more young peo­ple to tran­si­tion in­to agri­cul­ture while al­low­ing old­er work­ers to con­tin­ue main­tain­ing parks.

“Hire young peo­ple and put them on the plan­ta­tion...Then again, young peo­ple don’t want to work. They on­ly want to know when is pay­day.”

‘No re­spect for Cepep’

The work­er al­so com­plained about what she de­scribed as a lack of re­spect for Cepep work­ers and the role they play in main­tain­ing To­ba­go’s pub­lic spaces.

“They don’t give we cred­it where cred­it is due. Half of them don’t know how to mould them flow­ers. This is a work to keep the park how it look­ing. Who does give we prais­es? No­body. They al­ways look­ing down on we.”

She said Cepep work­ers of­ten went be­yond the call of du­ty, in­clud­ing help­ing el­der­ly res­i­dents clean their prop­er­ties in neigh­bour­hoods.

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee not­ed that agri­cul­ture had been part of the Cepep pro­gramme in the past. She re­called plant­i­ng cas­sa­va and sweet pep­pers but said work­ers were lat­er told farm­ing was not part of the pro­gramme.

Nonethe­less, at Sig­nal Hill, one Cepep team con­tin­ues to plant thyme and sea­son­ings as part of its work.

“We does do we lit­tle thing al­ready, farm­ing ain’t go be no prob­lem,” a fe­male em­ploy­ee said.

She said she hoped work­ers would re­ceive prop­er train­ing to en­sure a smooth tran­si­tion.

“Me ain’t know the dif­fer­ence be­tween short crop and long crop. You can’t just put peo­ple in­to farm­ing. They have to know what they do­ing, but they ain’t com­ing out and say any­thing.”

She ad­vised the THA to iden­ti­fy tasks suit­ed to each work­er’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“What about me who don’t like to play up in dirt? Put every­body in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. Train we to spray the plants. Every­body can’t bend down or mix up in chem­i­cal.”

Sham­fa: THA in­tends to fire work­ers

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis has ac­cused the THA of us­ing the tran­si­tion to farm­ing as a ruse to send work­ers home.

She said that, be­fore the THA elec­tions, the PNM had warned To­bag­o­ni­ans that the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion would ter­mi­nate the pro­gramme, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened in Trinidad.

Last year, the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment scrapped Cepep af­ter claim­ing the pro­gramme was rife with cor­rup­tion and linked to gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

Cud­joe-Lewis said, “I am dis­ap­point­ed in the THA be­cause the least the As­sem­bly could do is com­mu­ni­cate with these work­ers and let them know what to­mor­row holds...I know a lot of those per­sons are gonna be sent home or they’re gonna tie them up in arrange­ments that they know these per­sons can­not op­er­ate in.”

She urged the THA to ex­plore all av­enues, in­clud­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side agri­cul­ture, to re­train and re­pur­pose Cepep work­ers.

“I hope the As­sem­bly com­mits to do­ing an as­sess­ment to see who is best suit­ed where. Who has the phys­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty and abil­i­ty to do cer­tain types of work. Who has the men­tal and aca­d­e­m­ic abil­i­ty to do dif­fer­ent type of work. Mak­ing sure every­body gets the right space.”

Ef­forts to con­tact the Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty to ad­dress the work­ers’ con­cerns were un­suc­cess­ful.