Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal says a plan will soon go to Par­lia­ment to es­tab­lish a Cepep ma­rine ser­vice to aid in the polic­ing of wet­lands. The min­is­ter said so dur­ing his ad­dress at the min­istry's cel­e­bra­tion of yes­ter­day's World Wet­lands Day 2011 and the In­ter­na­tion­al Year of the Forests.At a func­tion held dur­ing yes­ter­day's cel­e­bra­tions at the Ca­roni Swamp Vis­i­tors' Cen­tre, Mooni­lal said: "The Cepep pro­gramme is be­ing ex­pand­ed, and since May 24 has been ex­pand­ed so much so that they have added 3,000 ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ees."

Mooni­lal said a plan was be­ing pre­pared and would soon go to Cab­i­net for ap­proval to es­tab­lish the Cepep Ma­rine Ser­vices to aid in the clean-up of "off-land" re­sources, in­clud­ing rivers and oth­er wet­lands.He said the plan would not on­ly con­tribute to the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the en­vi­ron­ment, but it would al­so pro­vide ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ment for cit­i­zens.Mooni­lal said Cepep would al­so col­lab­o­rate with the Forestry Di­vi­sion for the polic­ing and fur­ther man­age­ment of the wet­lands.

"I was told that 50 per cent of the orig­i­nal wet­lands area in T&T had dis­ap­peared and the sur­viv­ing 50 per cent were in many cas­es se­vere­ly de­grad­ed through mis­use and over-ex­ploita­tion" he said.Mooni­lal said un­law­ful use of wet­lands di­rect­ly re­sult­ed in flood­ing in ar­eas of north Trinidad, as well as Cou­va and Point Lisas.He said the Forestry Di­vi­sion had been com­plain­ing for years that while it was able to pa­trol the land, it did not have re­sources to pa­trol the swamps and rivers and that birds and oth­er en­dan­gered species were be­ing harmed and killed.

Mooni­lal said dis­cus­sions were be­ing held with Cepep and the Forestry Di­vi­sion in re­gards to ob­tain­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate ves­sels need­ed to pa­trol the ar­eas.Mooni­lal said the min­istry would com­mit to pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary pa­trol ves­sels to pre­vent poach­ing and oth­er un­law­ful use of the wet­lands.