Diego Martin Mayor: CEPEP terminations wrong

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

It is wrong.

These were the words used by Diego Mar­tin May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er to de­scribe a move by the new­ly elect­ed Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress coali­tion Gov­ern­ment to ter­mi­nate over 300 Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) con­trac­tors.

Glas­gow-Warn­er ad­dressed the act while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at an in­ter­faith ser­vice to com­mem­o­rate the two-year an­niver­sary of Diego Mar­tin be­ing made a bor­ough at the Church of the Na­tiv­i­ty in Crys­tal Stream, Diego Mar­tin, on Sat­ur­day.

Glas­gow-Warn­er said: “As over 10,000 work­ers across T&T face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing their liveli­hoods, I feel com­pelled to speak out on this is­sue.”

“This is wrong. This is not about pol­i­tics. It is about du­ty, com­pas­sion and what God ex­pects of us who lead,” she added.

Speak­ing with me­dia per­son­nel af­ter the ser­vice, Glas­gow-Warn­er was re­luc­tant to pre­dict whether her cor­po­ra­tion, which is ef­fec­tive­ly con­trolled by the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) would be starved of re­sources un­der the new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Re­ject­ing claims of such a pol­i­cy that was re­peat­ed­ly raised by UNC re­gion­al and bor­ough cor­po­ra­tions un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, Glas­gow-Warn­er said: “It is a mis­con­cep­tion that some cor­po­ra­tions are sti­fled based on who is in gov­ern­ment. Un­der lo­cal gov­ern­ment, all cor­po­ra­tions are giv­en their quo­ta. What they do with it is up to them. Some cor­po­ra­tions spend it well and oth­ers don’t,” she added.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted her cor­po­ra­tion’s an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions had to be post­poned from the start of June due to de­lays in ap­prov­ing fi­nanc­ing.

“This is be­cause even though we sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments for ap­proval of funds since April, we on­ly got the re­leas­es on Wednes­day. So, I don’t know, maybe,” she added.

Glas­gow-Warn­er said the cor­po­ra­tion will seek to high­light any dis­crim­i­na­tion it may pos­si­bly face and still work hard to im­prove the lives of its burgess­es.

Asked whether she was hap­py with the progress made since the area was made a bor­ough, Glas­gow-Warn­er said: “I am very pleased but there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment. We con­tin­ue to work hard and try our best to de­liv­er the ser­vices that are nec­es­sary for the res­i­dents of their re­gion.”