Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

As the new­ly ap­point­ed CEPEP board pre­pares to out­line the fu­ture of hir­ing con­trac­tors, one re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion is work­ing to cush­ion the im­pact of re­cent job loss­es by of­fer­ing short-term em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to some of the dis­placed work­ers.

With the en­ti­ty cur­rent­ly in tran­si­tion, Guardian Me­dia asked Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath when the new board would re­sume re­cruit­ment. Padarath said, “The board will be meet­ing next week, I am wait­ing to be ad­vised on their pro­posed way for­ward in treat­ing these mat­ters.”

Last week, Padarath said the new board would be un­veiled this week. Asked for the names of the mem­bers of the new board, Padarath did not re­spond.

CEPEP’s man­date is to pro­tect, beau­ti­fy, and main­tain pub­lic spaces through com­mu­ni­ty-based teams.

Padarath said in the in­ter­im some of those du­ties will be done by re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“I have spo­ken with the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, who has giv­en the com­mit­ment that the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will con­tin­ue main­tain­ing pub­lic spaces and pos­si­bly de­ploy ad­di­tion­al teams for now in ar­eas that CEPEP would have ser­viced.”

Un­der the cur­rent UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, there have been wide­spread ter­mi­na­tions of CEPEP con­tracts, af­fect­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 work­ers fol­low­ing an au­dit.

How­ev­er, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said yes­ter­day he has found a workaround to tem­porar­i­ly help a hand­ful of ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers.

“I dis­cussed it with my coun­cil­lors. What I am try­ing to do is re­tain at least sev­en work­ers who were for­mer CEPEP work­ers in my elec­toral dis­trict of Pleas­antville and bring them on to our dai­ly paid ca­su­al work for a fort­night,” the may­or ex­plained.

Par­ris said those work­ers would ac­tu­al­ly be paid more than what they earned at CEPEP. He said this will al­so help the city cor­po­ra­tion main­tain some of its green spaces.

He’s en­cour­ag­ing oth­er coun­cil­lors in San Fer­nan­do to do the same.

“I be­lieve it is a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, the longer that peo­ple are un­em­ployed. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we can­not main­tain that with the vol­ume of per­sons that are cur­rent­ly un­em­ployed, but we will try.”

In the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the largest in Trinidad,

Chair­man Josi­ah Austin said they do not have the ex­ist­ing pro­gramme to ex­e­cute what Par­ris is do­ing in the south.

“We’re try­ing to find the funds too. They have a run­ning pro­gramme that they are able to do. They have a fort­night­ly pro­gramme, a ro­tat­ing pro­gramme that they could fa­cil­i­tate. But we don’t have that pro­gramme at our cor­po­ra­tion. I be­lieve the cities have that.”

Austin com­plained the abrupt can­cel­la­tion of CEPEP con­tracts has placed ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when en­vi­ron­men­tal main­te­nance and dis­as­ter readi­ness are of height­ened im­por­tance.

“We at the TPRC are in the process of re­or­gan­is­ing our in­ter­nal re­sources to bridge the sig­nif­i­cant gap left by CEPEP’s with­draw­al. This re­quires the re­al­lo­ca­tion of our work teams, in­clu­sive of pub­lic health and road main­te­nance. How­ev­er, our ex­ist­ing re­sources make it a chal­lenge to ef­fec­tive­ly ser­vice the en­tire re­gion.”

In Ch­agua­nas, the may­or claimed there was a dis­par­i­ty in how CEPEP work­ers were de­ployed.

“CEPEP in my bor­ough was ba­si­cal­ly non-ex­is­tent. So to say that I am miss­ing them right now, I am not. I think we prob­a­bly had one in the en­tire bor­ough. Let me just say the con­stituen­cy of Ch­agua­nas West, I think we prob­a­bly had one CEPEP team,” said Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed.

He said some work­ers have been brought in on short-term con­tracts to as­sist in main­tain­ing green spaces.

In the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad said he is not feel­ing a ma­jor hit from the ab­sence of CEPEP labour.

“With­in Cou­va/Tabaquite, we on­ly have one mar­gin­al seat, which is La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro. The rest would have been UNC ar­eas that had just one, two, three con­trac­tors. So, it’s not a big im­pact re­al­ly.”

Ram­per­sad said his re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion work­ers are pick­ing up the slack and he is hop­ing to meet with the new CEPEP board to dis­cuss how the re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion labour force would work in har­mo­ny with CEPEP crews.