An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

For sev­er­al for­mer Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers, Christ­mas 2025 was marked less by cel­e­bra­tion and more by sur­vival.

Since the ter­mi­na­tion of hun­dreds of CEPEP con­tracts at the end of June, more than 10,000 work­ers have been left with­out a steady in­come, and many say the im­pact has been most painful­ly felt dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

The ter­mi­na­tions came just days af­ter the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans to car­ry out a full au­dit of CEPEP’s as­sets, con­tracts and op­er­a­tions. While the au­dit was framed as nec­es­sary to ad­dress long­stand­ing con­cerns around gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty, work­ers said the sud­den loss of in­come has pushed many fam­i­lies to the brink.

In ear­ly De­cem­ber, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen sought to quell pub­lic con­cern, stat­ing that the new­ly an­nounced Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces is not a re­place­ment for CEPEP. She ex­plained that the new pro­gramme would in­volve di­rect hir­ing through the min­istry, elim­i­nat­ing po­lit­i­cal in­ter­me­di­aries, so-called ghost gangs and oth­er abus­es as­so­ci­at­ed with the for­mer sys­tem.

In a news re­lease, Ameen de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as “a fresh, re­sults-dri­ven pro­gramme de­signed to strength­en man­pow­er at Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions, pay a de­cent wage, and op­er­ate with­out po­lit­i­cal mid­dle­men, pa­tron­age, or crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

But for for­mer CEPEP work­ers in­ter­viewed by Guardian Me­dia, those as­sur­ances re­main dis­tant from their dai­ly re­al­i­ty.

“Christ­mas is not Christ­mas this year”

Melis­sa Pan­tin (not her re­al name), a for­mer CEPEP work­er from Rich Plain, Diego Mar­tin, said this Christ­mas bore lit­tle re­sem­blance to pre­vi­ous years when she had a reg­u­lar in­come.

“Christ­mas is not Christ­mas this year,” she said. “Be­fore was bet­ter than this. At least you know you had your in­come com­ing in, and you could make sure gro­ceries are in the house. Now, I don’t even know where gro­cery mon­ey is com­ing from.”

Since her con­tract end­ed, Pan­tin has been sur­viv­ing by do­ing clean­ing jobs. The work is ir­reg­u­lar and paid month­ly, mean­ing any mon­ey earned in De­cem­ber will on­ly be re­ceived af­ter the New Year.

“It’s re­al­ly tough this year. This year is a stretch. When you do get paid, it’s just to pay bills. You have noth­ing ex­tra. You can’t save. You can’t just go to the gro­cery store and buy what you need.”

She in­di­cat­ed nei­ther she nor any­one on her for­mer CEPEP team has been con­tact­ed about the new pro­gramme, de­spite re­peat­ed at­tempts to sign up for ad­ver­tised op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We sign up plen­ty of times, maybe 15 times, and no­body ever calls. Not the fore­man, not the con­trac­tor, noth­ing. We haven’t got a call, a mes­sage, noth­ing.”

Her team con­sist­ed of ten work­ers, with two ad­di­tion­al teams op­er­at­ing in the Rich Plain area. Ac­cord­ing to Pan­tin, no one has been con­tact­ed.

“On­ly one per­son on my team is work­ing right now be­sides me,” she said. “And I’m still bet­ter off than some of them, be­cause some of them don’t have any­thing at all.”

To try to earn mon­ey for Christ­mas, Pan­tin sold pastelles, but busi­ness was slow.

“I on­ly get two or three or­ders, most­ly friends and fam­i­ly,” she said. “It’s not enough, but you’re grate­ful for any­thing.”

Ang­ie Per­sad, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked in the Cou­va area, de­scribed this Christ­mas as “very bleak,” say­ing the loss of her CEPEP in­come left her un­able to af­ford even ba­sic sea­son­al items.

“You can’t even buy a ham. You have to save the lit­tle mon­ey you have.”

Per­sad lives alone and said the ab­sence of a steady in­come has made her sit­u­a­tion es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult. She not­ed that since the con­tracts were ter­mi­nat­ed, no one from her for­mer team or man­age­ment struc­ture has reached out.

“No­body checks on us,” she lament­ed. “No­body.”

She added that she has not been con­tact­ed about the new pro­gramme and has lit­tle clar­i­ty on whether for­mer CEPEP work­ers will be pri­ori­tised.

“There’s a lev­el of frus­tra­tion,” Per­sad said. “You’re hear­ing things on so­cial me­dia, but no­body is telling you any­thing of­fi­cial.”

A 47-year-old moth­er of three from Tar­o­dale Hills, San Fer­nan­do, who asked not to be named, said the loss of CEPEP work has placed her house­hold un­der in­tense strain. Her hus­band is a join­er who works on­ly when con­tracts be­come avail­able, and with­out her in­come, the fam­i­ly has strug­gled to keep up with ba­sic ex­pens­es.

“We are liv­ing in an HDC house. Is it lights, wa­ter, food, every­thing,” she said. “It’s re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard and stress­ful right now.”

Thomas not­ed she has been send­ing out ré­sumés since June, hop­ing to se­cure work be­fore Christ­mas, but has re­ceived no re­spons­es.

“No­body calls. No­body says any­thing,” she said. “I’m just tak­ing it one day at a time for my chil­dren.”

She ex­plained that some­times she re­lies on food ham­pers or help from friends, pri­ori­tis­ing her chil­dren’s needs over her own.

“I al­ways say, I’d rather my chil­dren’s bel­ly full than mine,” Thomas said. “They’re small, so I have to make sure they eat.”

Thomas was part of a CEPEP team ser­vic­ing the M1 Tasker Road, Princes Town area, from the top of the road through to the St Madeleine Po­lice Sta­tion. Her team com­prised about 30 work­ers, none of whom, she said, has been called back un­der the new arrange­ment.

“It is very un­fair. CEPEP was nev­er per­ma­nent work; we un­der­stand that. But it was some­thing to put on the ta­ble. They just take it away just so.”

She be­lieves some work­ers are be­ing side­lined and fears that the lack of trans­paren­cy has deep­ened frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety.

“You can’t just dis­miss peo­ple and ex­pect them to sur­vive,” Thomas said. “I don’t know what they ex­pect us to do.” De­spite the hard­ship, Thomas said she is try­ing to re­main fo­cused on 2026, even if that means tak­ing any work she can find.

“My goal is to go out there and hunt,” she said. “I have to do some­thing to feed my kids.”

Her 20-year-old son, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked along­side her in CEPEP, is now jug­gling school and small jobs, but op­por­tu­ni­ties have been scarce.