DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

It was a night of yel­low flags and soar­ing rhetoric. Stand­ing be­fore a sea of sup­port­ers at the par­ty’s Ch­agua­nas head­quar­ters near­ly one year ago, a promise of a new eco­nom­ic dawn was made.

“This vic­to­ry is to cre­ate over 50,000 jobs, and so the vic­to­ry is yours,” de­clared then prime min­is­ter-elect Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her vic­to­ry speech.

For Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers, the re­frain “when UNC wins, every­body wins” was more than a slo­gan—it was a life­line.

But as Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proach­es the first an­niver­sary of the April gen­er­al elec­tion—which saw the UNC se­cure 26 seats to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) 13—the cel­e­bra­to­ry mu­sic has fad­ed for many. In the qui­et com­mu­ni­ties of To­co/San­gre Grande, the mile­stone is marked not by progress, but by loss.

For “Josanne,” a pseu­do­nym used to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty, the Gov­ern­ment’s first year in of­fice is mea­sured in weeks with­out a sta­ble in­come.

“It’s re­al­ly hard not know­ing where your next meal is com­ing from,” she said through tears.

A sin­gle moth­er of three, Josanne lost her job short­ly af­ter the UNC’s vic­to­ry oust­ed the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

While the change in gov­ern­ment brought hope to many who felt side­lined dur­ing the PNM’s near-decade in pow­er, Josanne rep­re­sents the oth­er side of the po­lit­i­cal pen­du­lum. At 37, she is nav­i­gat­ing the pre­car­i­ous re­al­i­ty of sup­port­ing three daugh­ters—aged 20, 17 and ten.

Josanne did not com­plete sec­ondary school but ben­e­fit­ed from state-sup­port­ed train­ing pro­grammes, gain­ing skills in house­keep­ing, bak­ing, ba­sic con­struc­tion and agri­cul­ture. For six years, she found sta­bil­i­ty in the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), ris­ing from labour­er to fore­man.

“I built a two-bed­room house. I fur­nished every­thing work­ing CEPEP, send­ing my daugh­ter to school while she’s do­ing her de­gree. And now that this op­por­tu­ni­ty is tak­en away from me, it’s even hard­er,” she said.

That sta­bil­i­ty van­ished in June when the new ad­min­is­tra­tion moved to wind up the pro­gramme, plac­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 10,500 peo­ple out of work.

“It was just a self­ish de­ci­sion be­cause you didn’t give peo­ple time to process this or even let the con­trac­tors know to in­form work­ers,” she said.

“We were told on a Tues­day that Fri­day would be our last work­ing day un­til fur­ther no­tice. So you’re com­ing home to your chil­dren not know­ing what your next move will be.”

The fall­out has ex­tend­ed be­yond fi­nances in­to the so­cial fab­ric of com­mu­ni­ties. Josanne de­scribed the col­lapse of “sou-sou” sys­tems—in­for­mal ro­tat­ing sav­ings schemes com­mon among work­ing-class groups—which had thrived with­in CEPEP teams.

“It had re­al chaos be­cause peo­ple had sou-sou run­ning, and then they couldn’t pay,” she ex­plained.

In an at­tempt to fill the gap left by tra­di­tion­al state em­ploy­ment pro­grammes, the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment launched the Na­tion­al Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces Pro­gramme on De­cem­ber 15, 2025.

The pi­lot be­gan with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 220 work­ers and is man­aged di­rect­ly by the min­istry, by­pass­ing con­trac­tors. Par­tic­i­pants are em­ployed on three-month cy­cles to main­tain pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen has main­tained that the ini­tia­tive is not a re­place­ment for CEPEP. Crit­ics, how­ev­er, ar­gue that its scale falls far short of ad­dress­ing the loss of thou­sands of jobs.

The hu­man im­pact is re­flect­ed in shift­ing labour sta­tis­tics. Ac­cord­ing to Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) da­ta, un­em­ploy­ment stood at 5.5 per cent (33,000 peo­ple) in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2024. By the first quar­ter of 2025, it fell to 4.9 per cent.

In the ear­ly months of the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, un­em­ploy­ment dropped fur­ther to 3.8 per cent be­tween April and June 2025. How­ev­er, by the third quar­ter (Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber), it climbed to 4.8 per cent—rep­re­sent­ing more than 12,000 job loss­es in a sin­gle quar­ter.

By the fourth quar­ter of 2025, the rate eased slight­ly to 4.3 per cent, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25,700 peo­ple. While an im­prove­ment on the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, it re­mained near­ly a full per­cent­age point above the mid-year low.

The da­ta al­so shows a shift­ing gen­der dy­nam­ic: 12,500 women were un­em­ployed in the fourth quar­ter, com­pared to 13,200 men. This con­trasts with the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, when 15,500 women were un­em­ployed ver­sus 13,100 men.

Crit­ics ar­gue the fig­ures do not ful­ly cap­ture what they de­scribe as a “clear­ing of the decks” in the pub­lic sec­tor, in­clud­ing re­struc­tur­ing with­in the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), the Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme, and the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs).

PNM deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu said the of­fi­cial da­ta tells on­ly part of the sto­ry. While the gov­ern­ment’s promise of 50,000 jobs re­mains a bench­mark, he ar­gues the re­al­i­ty re­flects a con­trac­tion that could reach six fig­ures.

“When you send home 50,000 peo­ple from the pub­lic sec­tor, you are re­mov­ing their abil­i­ty to take care of their fam­i­lies and main­tain dis­pos­able in­come,” Bood­hu said.

“That loss of spend­ing pow­er af­fects small and mi­cro busi­ness­es—gro­cery stores, hard­ware out­lets, food ven­dors. It is on­ly nat­ur­al to see a knock-on ef­fect in the pri­vate sec­tor through job loss­es and re­duced eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Gov­ern­ment launched a Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve on Oc­to­ber 19, 2025, cen­tred on an on­line por­tal un­der the Em­ployTT plat­form.

At the time, the Prime Min­is­ter said the ini­tia­tive would gen­er­ate more than 20,000 job op­por­tu­ni­ties, urg­ing cit­i­zens to reg­is­ter on­line or at phys­i­cal hubs. The re­sponse was im­me­di­ate, with 30,000 ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted with­in hours. By the end of the dri­ve, 110,000 peo­ple had reg­is­tered, in­clud­ing at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre.

On March 18, job seek­ers—in­clud­ing for­mer CEPEP work­ers—re­turned to the venue for the sec­ond phase of the ini­tia­tive.

How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed lim­it­ed up­dates on the pro­gramme’s progress. Guardian Me­dia re­porters were asked to leave the venue, and me­dia cov­er­age was re­strict­ed pend­ing an of­fi­cial state­ment.

Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan said the over­whelm­ing re­sponse to the re­cruit­ment dri­ve sig­nals an econ­o­my strug­gling to ab­sorb labour. She not­ed that youth un­em­ploy­ment re­mains a crit­i­cal con­cern but cau­tioned against ex­pect­ing im­me­di­ate re­sults from the gov­ern­ment’s job-cre­ation pledge.

“The gov­ern­ment didn’t say it would gen­er­ate 50,000 jobs in year one,” she said. “The econ­o­my is still in a pe­ri­od of cau­tious re­cov­ery. The ad­min­is­tra­tion has been man­ag­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and try­ing to sta­bilise con­di­tions. On that score, they have done a de­cent job.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste for com­ment on the ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment fig­ures but re­ceived no re­sponse up to pub­li­ca­tion. Min­is­ter Ameen in­di­cat­ed that a state­ment would be made dur­ing the UNC’s an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions in Cou­va on Sat­ur­day.

For Josanne and thou­sands like her, the wait con­tin­ues—for both an­swers and em­ploy­ment—as the an­niver­sary of a promised “vic­to­ry for all” ap­proach­es.