Sin­gle Moth­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SMATT) pres­i­dent Sher­maine Wick­ham-Howe is ask­ing in­com­ing prime min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, not to re­move sin­gle moth­ers em­ployed with the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so wants a meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“Pay at­ten­tion to how they are go­ing to man­age the moth­ers on the ground, the per­sons be­ing re­moved from their jobs and lis­ten to the cry of these peo­ple. We have mouths to feed, rent to pay and it’s not nice to just delete them from the sys­tem. We would ap­pre­ci­ate it if she can find some­where, some mid­dle ground to ac­com­mo­date them,” Wick­ham-Howe said.

She said since the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lost the elec­tion on Mon­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion has re­ceived dozens of calls from work­ers who have been em­ployed un­der both pro­grammes over the last ten years.

“The phone is still ring­ing off the hook and we have a lot of con­cerns ... Whether we ac­knowl­edge it, the URP and Cepep and these pro­grammes are po­lit­i­cal­ly af­fil­i­at­ed pro­grammes and when gov­ern­ment changes, per­sons are re­moved. This is one of our biggest wor­ry and fear,” she stat­ed.

In a Zoom in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Wick­ham-Howe said the work­ers are wor­ried be­cause this has hap­pened in the past, where work­ers were dis­missed ar­bi­trar­i­ly af­ter a new par­ty won the gen­er­al elec­tion.

She said these women can­not face un­em­ploy­ment right now, es­pe­cial­ly with a new school year in mere months.

“We have moth­ers who have chil­dren in school. Com­mon En­trance (Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am) is about to come out as well and they have to pre­pare them for new schools, even preschool­ers who are now about to start. They need to be em­ployed to fol­low suit with tak­ing care of their chil­dren,” she said.

With over 30,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book, Wick­ham-Howe said the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO), which was found­ed in 2012 and was of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered in 2017, helps sin­gle moth­ers nav­i­gate life.

While she has called on the in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent hoped to get a meet­ing with her in the near fu­ture.

“We would like to meet with her in per­son be­cause we have a lot of is­sues that are not ad­dressed and we have reached out to the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on many oc­ca­sions but to no avail. We were side­lined and we were over­looked,” she claimed.

She said many sin­gle moth­ers do not stay with URP and Cepep for­ev­er.

She ex­plained that two years ago the as­so­ci­a­tion helped 40-plus women reg­is­ter their busi­ness­es in ar­eas such as cook­ing, sewing, cater­ing, etc.