A for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and the CEO of an em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­gramme says the re­cent dis­missal of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme work­ers could see a rise in men­tal health is­sues.

Neil Parsan­lal, who leads the Petrotrin Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (PEAP­SL) said ma­jor job loss­es have the po­ten­tial to lead to stress and trau­ma as ex­pe­ri­enced in the past with re­trenched Petrotrin em­ploy­ees.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Parsan­lal said that un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­trenched Petrotrin work­ers were pro­vid­ed with up to six months of EAP ser­vices. 

Parsan­lal said, “I think there is a need for the en­tire coun­try to have a greater em­pha­sis on men­tal health and par­tic­u­lar­ly in deal­ing with work­ers and their fam­i­lies and the trau­ma that comes with be­ing un­em­ployed. So, that men­tal health as­pect, we tend to fo­cus on­ly on the phys­i­cal, on what is very present in front of us, but we do not pay suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion to the men­tal health ex­po­sure or the po­ten­tial for men­tal ill­ness or events as a re­sult of the trau­ma. It’s still im­por­tant to have em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­grammes in all State com­pa­nies, for that mat­ter, be­cause that kind of sup­port is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for work­ers.”

While there’s been no word from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment on whether any coun­selling sup­port would be pro­vid­ed to dis­missed CEPEP work­ers, Parsan­lal warned that sup­port should be pro­vid­ed not on­ly to fired work­ers but to those who re­main at the com­pa­nies. He ex­plained that they may be faced with sur­vivor’s guilt and anx­i­ety sur­round­ing their job se­cu­ri­ty.

“Even the work­ers who have re­mained, not just those who have been let go, but you still have of­fice staff, they too are trau­ma­tised and there­fore they will al­so need the psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port for their own men­tal health and men­tal well-be­ing. There’s some­thing called sur­vivor’s guilt and those who re­main, those who sur­vive, are al­so trau­ma­tised be­cause they now are think­ing who’s go­ing to be next, ‘Am I go­ing to be next?’ So they’re all go­ing to be walk­ing on nee­dles for a long time in the ab­sence of any in­for­ma­tion to them.”

He said he had faith that peo­ple in T&T would not turn to crime once faced with an un­ex­pect­ed chal­lenge, but stressed the need for men­tal health aware­ness.

At­tempts to con­tact Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit were fu­tile yes­ter­day.