Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With thou­sands now on the bread­line fol­low­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of con­tracts un­der the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), and the Forestry Di­vi­sion, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning is call­ing for more sup­port for those who have been left job­less.

In re­cent weeks, Man­ning said his of­fice has been flood­ed with calls and vis­its from con­stituents who re­lied heav­i­ly on these pro­grammes. Many are now strug­gling to meet their ba­sic needs. Over the past two weeks, with as­sis­tance from the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty, he has dis­trib­uted be­tween 60 and 70 ham­pers to the peo­ple who have been af­fect­ed.

On June 27, 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors were fired. This was soon fol­lowed by the ter­mi­na­tion of con­tracts un­der the URP and the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Pro­gramme. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia by phone, Man­ning not­ed that these pro­grammes em­ployed some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in the coun­try.

“From what I have seen, we had about 20,000 peo­ple dis­placed in this coun­try in the last few weeks. As the MP for San Fer­nan­do East, we could not sit idly by and al­low peo­ple to suf­fer. So, we are do­ing all that we can to try to sup­port some of the more vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple with­in the con­stituen­cy,” he said.

Man­ning added that his of­fice will soon launch a back-to-school dri­ve and is cur­rent­ly help­ing res­i­dents ap­ply for as­sis­tance through the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, guid­ing them through the nec­es­sary pa­per­work and re­quire­ments.

He said for­mer work­ers are deeply wor­ried about their fu­ture, es­pe­cial­ly with the new school term fast ap­proach­ing.

“And when you are such a vul­ner­a­ble group of peo­ple, even a month or two of non-pay­ment can have a dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect on their house­hold. Of course, they are very con­cerned,” he said.

While some dis­placed work­ers were re­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, not all could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

“We are do­ing our part, and we are en­cour­ag­ing oth­er agen­cies in the con­stituen­cy to do their part in as­sist­ing some of these vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple un­til bet­ter can be done,” he added.

The for­mer min­is­ter be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment failed to con­sid­er the so­cial reper­cus­sions of its ac­tions and warns that a so­cial cri­sis is loom­ing.

“It was thought­less and ex­treme­ly cal­lous, and it sim­ply proves that the Gov­ern­ment—as we all knew—didn’t re­al­ly have a plan for this coun­try. There is no ini­tia­tive that makes sense. You would want to put 20,000 of some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in this coun­try on the bread­line all at the same time. It has cre­at­ed a cri­sis in many of our so­cial pro­grammes through­out the coun­try, and it is un­called for—it was un­nec­es­sary,” Man­ning said.

The Gov­ern­ment has since stat­ed that CEPEP was flagged by the Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee for al­leged ques­tion­able hir­ing prac­tices, and an au­dit is cur­rent­ly un­der­way. For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­cent­ly al­leged that se­cret CEPEP hir­ings were done in UNC-held ar­eas, but cur­rent Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has since dis­missed those claims.