Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga says that the re­cent ter­mi­na­tion of work­ers from the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) has al­ready had vis­i­ble ef­fect on his con­stituen­cy as sev­er­al res­i­dents are in dire need of fi­nance help.

Speak­ing with re­porters at a mil­i­tary pa­rade com­mem­o­rat­ing Diego Mar­tin’s Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions at the West Park Sa­van­nah, West­moor­ings, on Fri­day morn­ing, de No­bri­ga said he has re­ceived a sig­nif­i­cant in­flux of mes­sages and ap­peals for help from re­cent­ly fired CEPEP work­ers, es­pe­cial­ly par­ents.

He not­ed that the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed as many fam­i­lies were mak­ing prepa­ra­tions for the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion and for the new school term in Sep­tem­ber, with re­quests rang­ing from help with books and sta­tionery to food cards and ham­pers.

“They’re look­ing at school start­ing, not know­ing how to eas­i­ly an­swer the ques­tion that every par­ent has to an­swer in that time ... so there’s a re­al im­pact on them and of course as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives we have to find so­lu­tions work­ing with them as a par­ty in the PNM, work­ing with NGOs and the church­es to help these hun­dreds of moth­ers and fa­thers.”

But apart from the hu­man im­pact of the ter­mi­na­tions, de No­bri­ga said there has been a vis­i­ble change in the ap­pear­ance of his con­stituen­cy, with over­grown bush­es at the side of main roads and thor­ough­fares.

He said this was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing as con­stituents must now con­tend with the poor main­te­nance in com­mu­ni­ties pre­vi­ous­ly ser­viced by CEPEP work­ers, as he em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the pro­gramme not on­ly to fam­i­lies in need, but for com­mu­ni­ties as a whole.

De­spite this, de No­bri­ga said the PNM was com­mit­ted to ren­der­ing im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance to those in need, as sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions were had to dis­cuss what re­lief could be made to those in need, while press­ing ahead with le­gal chal­lenges against the Gov­ern­ment over the ter­mi­na­tions.