RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Scores of peo­ple, in­clud­ing for­mer CEPEP work­ers, turned out for the sec­ond phase of a Gov­ern­ment re­cruit­ment dri­ve in Cou­va on yes­ter­day, hop­ing to se­cure steady em­ploy­ment af­ter months—and in some cas­es years—with­out sta­ble jobs.

Among them was 45-year-old La­m­ont Mor­ris, who said he has been hus­tling to sur­vive for more than a decade.

“It feels good for now… I’ve been look­ing for a job a long time, about 15 years,” Mor­ris said. “So as I get through here, every­thing will be straight for now.”

Mor­ris, who de­scribed him­self as a hus­tler, said he has been re­ly­ing on small-scale sell­ing to make ends meet.

“Sell­ing is my pro­fes­sion… that’s how I’ve been sup­port­ing my­self,” he said, wel­com­ing the ini­tia­tive as a long-await­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Al­so in line was an el­der­ly for­mer CEPEP work­er, who said the past eight months with­out work have been es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult.

“It hard, it hard. We work­ing there, no job, no in­come… so it hard here,” the man said.

He ex­plained that he had worked with CEPEP for 13 years be­fore the pro­gramme end­ed, leav­ing him un­cer­tain about his fu­ture.

“We didn’t know where we were go­ing… we had to wait and see. Time will tell,” he added.

While many ex­pressed hope about the re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise, there was con­fu­sion among some ap­pli­cants about the process, with sev­er­al say­ing they were sim­ply told to show up and wait.

While Guardian Me­dia was con­duct­ing in­ter­views, a co­or­di­na­tor who iden­ti­fied her­self as Mrs Ja­groo in­ter­vened and in­struct­ed ap­pli­cants not to speak with the me­dia.

“This is a Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture ex­er­cise… I am im­plor­ing you all, please don’t give any me­dia cov­er­age un­til our min­is­ter is pre­pared to make a pub­lic state­ment,” she said.

Ja­groo al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the re­cruit­ment dri­ve was be­ing con­duct­ed in se­cre­cy.

“This is phase two of the na­tion­al re­cruit­ment dri­ve… there’s noth­ing dif­fer­ent,” she said, adding that the me­dia would be in­vit­ed at a lat­er stage when the ex­er­cise is com­plete.

She fur­ther ar­gued that the me­dia should have sought per­mis­sion through of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels be­fore con­duct­ing in­ter­views.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of Works Jear­lean John main­tained that the ex­er­cise was part of a reg­u­lar, wide­ly ad­ver­tised re­cruit­ment dri­ve, which had pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived me­dia cov­er­age.