RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With just $100 left in her wal­let, fired CEPEP work­er De­siree Lopez has been pray­ing that she and her three chil­dren will not end up home­less dur­ing their school hol­i­days.

It’s been al­most a month since over 300 con­trac­tors were is­sued ter­mi­na­tion let­ters on June 27, which led to over 10,000 work­ers now on the bread­line.

Now, in­stead of spend­ing time play­ing with friends, Lopez’s 11-year-old son worked along­side her at her sis­ter’s home in Co­coyea, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day. Her sis­ter had agreed to pay them to help clean the house, giv­ing Lopez a way to earn a lit­tle mon­ey for rent and gro­ceries.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Lopez ex­plained that she has been rais­ing her three chil­dren, aged 14, 11 and five, with­out fi­nan­cial sup­port from their fa­thers.

“I don’t get no fi­nan­cial help from any of the fa­thers that I have. It’s two of them, so it is very hard on me know­ing that I have to pro­vide for my­self and my kids alone. I have rent to pay and I have bills to pay, I have in­ter­net but right now I am ow­ing and I don’t have enough fi­nan­cial sup­port for me to pay the rent.”

She ex­pressed hope that her CEPEP salary from last month would come in­to her ac­count next week.

Lopez, who worked for four years with Jam­boree Con­trac­tors, said her job end­ed sud­den­ly last month.

Say­ing she be­lieved the changes were due to a reshuf­fling un­der the new Gov­ern­ment, Lopez ex­pressed hope that she would be re­hired.

“I thought by now they would have opened back the project. I find that they are over­do­ing it now be­cause I am now home as a sin­gle moth­er with three chil­dren,” she said.

Lopez re­vealed that her 14-year-old son has been wor­ried about how she will man­age to keep a roof over their heads.

“My big son was ask­ing me, ‘Mum­my, how you go­ing and pay the rent?’ So that re­al­ly just hit my heart be­cause if it is my son who is just 14 years and he is wor­ried,” she said.

For al­most the past month, Lopez said she has been re­ly­ing on fam­i­ly when pos­si­ble and us­ing her lit­tle sav­ings to buy gro­ceries.

“To­day, my sis­ter called me to come and help her do a lit­tle clean­ing in the yard… so I on­ly start­ed to­day but I’m grate­ful,” she said.

Mean­while, a fa­ther of four from Clax­ton Bay, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said he had start­ed work­ing in the For­res Park dump so he could get a few dol­lars to care for his fam­i­ly. He al­so said that while the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to re­struc­ture CEPEP, he was hop­ing that the “small man” would get jobs.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said CEPEP is cur­rent­ly un­der au­dit as the pro­gramme was flagged by the Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee of the Min­istry of Fi­nance for “ques­tion­able hir­ing prac­tices,” along with in­ad­e­quate over­sight in pro­cure­ment and a fail­ure to sub­mit au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for sev­en years.

The CEPEP con­trac­tors were ter­mi­nat­ed as the re­view and au­dit oc­curred.

Padarath warned that un­der his lead­er­ship, CEPEP will “no longer be used as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty group,” point­ing out that be­tween 2016 and 2025, over 60 per cent of its con­trac­tors were from con­stituen­cies con­trolled by the PNM.