A for­mer co­or­di­na­tor of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) is de­fend­ing the in­tegri­ty of its work­ers and op­er­a­tions, amid sting­ing crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Speak­ing dur­ing a pre-bud­get con­sul­ta­tion in Siparia on Tues­day, the Prime Min­is­ter launched a blis­ter­ing at­tack on CEPEP, the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), and the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme, brand­ing them as hotbeds for “ghost gangs” and crim­i­nal ex­ploita­tion.

Jus­ti­fy­ing plans to re­struc­ture the ini­tia­tives, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told sup­port­ers, “We have be­come a na­tion of grass cut­ters un­der the PNM. The CEPEP cut­ting grass, the URP cut­ting grass, Re­for­esta­tion cut­ting grass when they’re sup­posed to be plant­i­ng trees. They didn’t plant any.

“The Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is cut­ting grass, HDC cut­ting grass, NGC cut­ting grass. So, all the peo­ple in our coun­try are grass cut­ters.”

She al­so warned against sim­ply re­plac­ing prob­lem­at­ic in­di­vid­u­als, stat­ing that such a move would not fix the deep­er, sys­temic is­sues.

“Some of our own sup­port­ers vex with me be­cause they feel we should just re­place the CEPEP and the URP. That will take us nowhere. They have be­come crim­i­nalised,” she said, de­scrib­ing how gang lead­ers al­leged­ly threat­en work­ers in­to fal­si­fy­ing gang ros­ters.

“All it takes is for the crim­i­nal to come and say, ‘I know where you’re liv­ing. I know your wife. I know your son. Write down these five names.’ So, you have five ghosts be­cause of fear.”

How­ev­er, a for­mer CEPEP co­or­di­na­tor, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said he nev­er en­coun­tered crim­i­nal co­er­cion or cor­rupt prac­tices dur­ing his tenure and slammed the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments as “wild­ly in­ac­cu­rate” and dis­re­spect­ful to thou­sands of work­ers.

“I nev­er en­coun­tered any­thing close to what she de­scribed. That’s just doltish­ness—dis­re­spect­ful, base­less, and sick. Peo­ple are do­ing hon­est work,” he said.

PNM chair­man and Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so blast­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks, call­ing them “reck­less” and “ir­re­spon­si­ble.”

“She is de­mon­is­ing pro­grammes that serve as life­lines in many com­mu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly for sin­gle par­ents and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies,” he said.

Gon­za­les not­ed that dur­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s 2010–2015 term in of­fice, more than $700 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to CEPEP.

He said the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion scaled back the pro­gramme in 2015 amid falling rev­enues, while ex­pand­ing train­ing ini­tia­tives un­der the Min­istries of Youth De­vel­op­ment, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and Ed­u­ca­tion.

“I’ve nev­er heard of CEPEP be­ing used by crim­i­nals or gangs—un­til now, from the UNC,” Gon­za­les said. “This is just their ex­cuse to can­cel these pro­grammes and de­prive more than 11,000 peo­ple of jobs.”

He ac­cused the UNC of re­turn­ing to a fa­mil­iar strat­e­gy: “scan­dal­is­ing and crim­i­nal­is­ing” state pro­grammes to jus­ti­fy bud­get cuts, just as he said they had done with youth de­vel­op­ment cen­tres in the past.