Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Young men in Les Coteaux, To­ba­go, say they are be­com­ing rest­less, as they now feel for­got­ten and ne­glect­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Dur­ing a vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty last week, a group of youths lim­ing by a cor­ner told Guardian Me­dia the vil­lage has be­come “the black sheep” on the is­land.

They claimed promis­es of sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment were made pri­or to the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions but are yet to ma­te­ri­alise five months af­ter the polls.

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) won the THA elec­tions by a record 15-0 mar­gin, with as­sem­bly­man Zor­isha Hack­ett re­tain­ing the Bethes­da/Les Coteaux seat.

Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, a young man said peo­ple can­not feed their fam­i­lies with Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) jobs now on of­fer.

“Every time a politi­cian come in, they on­ly post­ing we in CEPEP. We want bet­ter work. The thing re­al hard and they ain’t care about we. Black sheep and them, they leave we to the dirt,” he said.

He said men 18 years and over are des­per­ate for de­cent jobs and are tired of emp­ty promis­es.

“CEPEP can’t mind we. From the time yuh bring in ah lil $1,400, that done. We want ah lil $2,500 or some­thing. We suf­fer­ing re­al bad here. We fed up ah them.”

He claimed young men were promised an “ear­ly morn­ing wuk” by politi­cians dur­ing the THA elec­tion cam­paign.

“They tell we when we vote we go get cut­lass work and when the time come, they throw we in the CEPEP.”

Asked if there are pro­grammes avail­able to im­prove their skillsets, he said, “We ain’t get no pro­gramme, on­ly CEPEP and URP.”

He claimed to be pro­fi­cient in weld­ing and ma­son­ry but said he has been forced in­to agri­cul­ture to sur­vive.

An­oth­er youth agreed that em­ploy­ment has dwin­dled in the area con­sid­er­ably.

“I does do meh thing and cut up green man­go and hus­tle,” he said.

In a re­sponse to their con­cerns, Hack­ett told Guardian Me­dia that there are op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able for young peo­ple. She said there is an un­em­ploy­ment reg­istry in her elec­toral dis­trict, but not­ed peo­ple can on­ly be matched for jobs they are qual­i­fied for.

Fur­ther­more, Hack­ett said the com­mu­ni­ty im­pact pro­gramme un­der the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Skills and In­no­va­tion is 100 per cent free and al­lows par­tic­i­pants to com­plete their aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ac­quire tech­ni­cal and busi­ness skills. No aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions are nec­es­sary to en­rol in the pro­gramme, she added.

The As­sem­bly­man said she has dipped in­to her pock­ets re­peat­ed­ly in the past to en­rol young men in her dis­trict in­to the MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy pro­gramme.

Hack­ett added, “I sent ten of them on a con­struc­tion site just yes­ter­day (Tues­day June 2). I just hope they went and took ad­van­tage of oth­er such op­por­tu­ni­ties be­ing af­ford­ed to them. They will have to al­so do their part.”