Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to end state fund­ing of crim­i­nal gangs by phas­ing out the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

Tan­coo said both pro­grammes will be re­placed with full-time, bet­ter-paid em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s new job cre­ation strat­e­gy.

“This Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to end­ing the state fund­ing of crim­i­nal gangs by elim­i­nat­ing the CEPEP and URP and re­plac­ing them with pro­vid­ing full-time, bet­ter-paid jobs,” he told the Par­lia­ment dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get.

He said an Em­ploy­ment Fund with an al­lo­ca­tion of $475 mil­lion has been es­tab­lished with­in the Min­istry of Fi­nance to sup­port the ini­tia­tive. This will be sup­ple­ment­ed by $310 mil­lion from the Un­em­ploy­ment Fund.

“The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter will pro­vide greater de­tail on this very crit­i­cal job cre­ation ex­er­cise dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion,” Tan­coo said.